The Slow Path
by Caskett54
Summary: "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return." -Leonardo da Vinci. Set just after the S2 finale. This is the story of Rose Tyler as she tries to readjust to life without her Doctor. Life on the slow path.
1. Chapter 1

_**When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.**_

_**-Leonardo da Vinci **_

-0-0-0-

"_Let me back!"_

"_I want you safe. My Doctor."_

"_They keep trying to split us up, but they never ever will."_

"_Stuck with you, that's not so bad."_

"_I made my choice a long time ago, and I am never going to leave you."_

"_**Let me back!" **_

-0-0-0-

Rose Tyler wakes with tears in her eyes.

That's how it normally is for her these days. Normal. That damn word makes her want to laugh and cry and scoff all at the same time (which, as she recently discovered, is impossible). Her first thought as she watches herself trying to go about an ordinary, everyday life, is that it's nothing close to normal, not for her, not anymore. But it is, isn't it? This is what everyone does. This is how everyone lives, wallowing through life in slow-motion, stuck in the bog, taking the long way around. It's completely normal. But it's not. Not for her, not after two years of cheating time and taking shortcuts. After all that time spent bouncing from place to place, time to time, how is she supposed to go back to this?

Simple answer: she's not.

But she has to.

It's not fair. None of it.

She finds that she can define her reality in 'if only' statements these days. If only the TARDIS hadn't been sucked into that alternate reality months ago. If only Torchwood hadn't felt the need to screw everything up by working with those 'ghosts', those Cybermen. If only that damn lever had stayed in place. If only Pete Tyler hadn't jumped back to her reality in the nick of time to grab her and pull her into his… Yes, that one makes the list every time. She can't help but hate him a little bit for stranding her here, trapped under the weight of all this crushing normality. She'd almost prefer eternal oblivion in the void between dimensions to this pathetic attempt at a life. And it's not just the normality of it. It isn't. Maybe, given time, she could adjust back to this sort of a life, trudging through moments one after the next in order instead of hopping between them as she pleased.

But she doesn't think she could ever adjust to a life without him.

That's how she thinks of him these days. Simply that. _Him. _Because it hurts to even think his name, hurts to summon up an image of him in her mind – especially because the first image that comes to mind is the last time she saw him. The last time she'll ever see him (it hurts to think that, too). Reaching out to her, screaming her name, misery and agony and awful desperation on his face. And it hurts to see him that way. Screw her, she can be as miserable as she likes. But she doesn't want to see him burdened by those feelings, too. He already has so much weight to carry, and she hates the very idea of adding to it.

So seeing his face in that moment is pure, sheer anguish. Because it's the face of someone watching someone they care about die.

She might as well be dead, anyways. This, this agonizingly slow, unbelievably dull, unbearably empty affair, isn't a life.

So she thinks of him as him. She doesn't think his name because it hurts. But she can't help it when she's dreaming, and it hurts just as much there.

"_I want you safe. My Doctor."_

The strange thing is, she doesn't remember ever saying that. She has an image of the event in her mind, but she can't tie it to a memory. It's strange, too – she almost wants to think she made it up, because it makes no sense. In the visuals that go along with those words she doesn't remember uttering, she's glowing. Like some kind of an angel (though few things could be further from the truth, especially now). This golden glow, this blinding light, it's everywhere. It burns like fire in her eyes, floods from the open doors of the TARDIS behind her. And when she speaks, her voice is haunting and ethereal, echoing like there are five Roses all speaking at once. Her surroundings are mostly dull and gray… she recognizes the place… Satellite Five, it's Satellite Five. She's on Satellite Five. And there are… there are Daleks, Daleks everywhere… And there he is, it's _him, _right there in front of her, and he hasn't regenerated, he's still the insane, Northern, leather-jacket-wearing, big-eared, big-nosed, eccentric, wonderful man she fell in love with in the start, the man who looked her in the eyes and told her to run…

"_I want you safe," _she tells him in her ethereal voice. _"My Doctor. Protected from the false god."_

Always the same words. Always those same words. And they don't make sense at all.

It's been three nights since she became trapped in this universe. She doesn't count time in days anymore – she counts in nights. Because in the day, she hides from reality, from her family, from the pain. She wishes it all away. She wishes herself somewhere else, somewhere far away with him. In the day, she isolates herself. But come night… that's when her mind forces her to embrace everything she tries to deny in the day. In her dreams, she relives time with him. Only in her dreams is she able to fully realize how much she misses him, because only in her dreams does she open herself up enough to feel the agony of his absence.

Three nights. And every night, the same dream. It's a montage of sorts, a collaboration of memories of her and him. The assortment varies every time. She hugs him a lot in the dream. The time she kissed him while possessed by Cassandra is a common occurrence, too, though admittedly, she doesn't mind that one as much. But the only memory that is there every time is that one. Those words.

"_I want you safe. My Doctor."_

Sometimes she gets more. The first night, she also heard his voice – his original voice, before he regenerated – calling out to her, crying, _"Rose, you've got to stop this, you've got to stop this now!"_ Last night, she also saw the sign reading **BAD WOLF CORPORATION, **saw herself raise her hand, saw the letters float off the sign and fly away, fluttering into nothingness. But tonight, she got only those eleven words.

"_I want you safe. My Doctor. Protected from the false god."_

The 'protected from the false god' part is new. Every night, she gets the basic six, plus whatever detail her subconscious sees fit to add in. Tonight, she got five extra words. But they don't make any sense, either. None of it makes sense.

God, she misses him. She misses him so much it's like a physical pain, an aching in her chest that just won't go away. Yesterday, she actually took an ibuprofen pill to see if it would help. It didn't. The only thing that can possibly help is him, here, now. His arms around her, the warmth of his body seeping into hers, two heartbeats pressed against her chest. His mouth at her ear, whispering love and reassurances or maybe just her name. She doesn't care what he's saying, just so long as it's his voice.

"Rose?" There's a light, hesitant knocking at her door, and she's relieved to hear that the voice of the person on the other side isn't Pete, who she still resents for bringing her here, or Mickey, who she can't deal with right now because of the muddled mix of feelings that seeing him brings to the front of her mind. No, it's Jackie. It's her mother. It's the one person here who perhaps she could actually stand to see.

"Come in," she calls weakly, and she's almost surprised to hear that her voice still works. The door creaks slightly as it opens, revealing her mother silhouetted against the brightness of the hallway outside.

Rose flinches, recoiling and squinting as the light floods into her room. For the past few days, she's deliberately kept the lights of in her room. She finds a tiny bit of solace in the darkness. In the darkness, she can pretend that she's home in her reality. Better yet, she can pretend that she'll look to her left and he'll be there, standing in the shadows in the corner, smiling at her.

"Sorry," Jackie says quickly, pushing the door closed behind her. Well, not closed exactly. She leaves it open, just a crack, just to let in enough light so that she won't trip over one of the many things littering the floor that, at one point over the past few days, Rose threw across the room in a fit of angst and rage. "Still in bed," she notes as she approaches her. "Have you looked at the time?"

Rose doesn't reply.

"It's nearly one," Jackie informs her. "I brought you some lunch, if you're hungry."

Rose doesn't reply. So Jackie just walks the rest of the way to where she's sitting up in bed, blankets tangled around her legs, and places a tray on her lap. There's a small white plate with a nicely cut sandwich on it, along with a small bowl of chips and a clear glass of water. Rose immediately takes the water and moves it to her bedside table – it doesn't really matter, but she supposes she'd rather not spill it.

"Sweetheart, are you okay?" Jackie asks after a second, but instead of the _are-you-seriously-asking-me-that _glare she'd been expecting, she is facing a daughter just as unresponsive as ever. Rose simply sits there listlessly, staring across the room with a blank expression and dead eyes. She does not give her mother any sign that she has heard what she was saying. And Jackie finds herself longing for the passionate, angry Rose she got just after Pete pulled her into this reality. The Rose that refused food, refused company, refused comfort. The Rose who screamed her pain for all the world to hear. Jackie remembers a conversation they'd had on the first day after they became trapped here, when she came in to try to give her supper while she was having one of her fits.

"_Rose!" she exclaimed indignantly, ducking as an alarm clock went flying over her head and crashed against the wall behind her. "Calm down!"_

"_Don't tell me to calm down," Rose replied, her tone deadly, her eyes burning with anger as she pointed accusatorily at her mother. "Don't you ever tell me to calm down."_

"_I'm sorry," Jackie said weakly. "I'm sorry – but honestly, sweetheart, would he want this?" She spread her arms to indicate the entirety of the already-trashed room. "Wouldn't he want you to move on, make a life for yourself?"_

"_Stop talking about him like he'd dead!" Rose snapped viciously, yanking a book from the shelf and hurling it at the wall; it missed Jackie by inches. "He's not dead! He's out there, and I'm going to get back to him!"_

"_What do you mean, get back to him?"_

"_I mean get back to him," she growled. "I need to find a way to – to reactivate those Torchwood reality-jumping devices, to reopen the rift, something, I don't know, something –"_

"_He said you couldn't!" Jackie cried. "He said that if you did, you'd – I don't know – tear the universe apart or something –"_

"_Then I'll tear the universe apart," Rose said, and the deadly calm in her daughter's voice as she made that statement froze Jackie where she stood. "I'll tear the universe apart until I find him," she continued. "Nothing can stop me from getting back to him."_

That Rose, it seems, is gone now, replaced by this dull, soulless husk of a person, this empty shell that used to be so full of life. She's given up. And that is not something that Rose Tyler does often.

"I'll just go, then," Jackie says softly, moving back towards the door. "Try to eat something. I love you." And then she leaves the room and closes the door behind her, and Rose returns to the blessed darkness and to her painful thoughts.

It's only once the sound of her mother's footsteps retreating down the hall have faded completely from her ears that Rose allows herself to move. And that's not all she allows herself to do. For the first time since it happened, the first time in three nights, she allows herself to feel the pain she's been trying to hold at bay. She invites it in. And she does so by parting her lips and finding her voice and allowing a sound she's been trying to suppress escape for the first time in three nights. She allows herself to say his name.

It's barely more than a breath, barely even a whisper, but it's enough to send pangs of agony ricocheting through her chest, enough to constrict her throat, enough to summon moisture to the corners of her eyes. It's barely a sound, but it's enough.

"Doctor."


	2. Chapter 2

_Doctor,_

_Oh, I shouldn't have done that. It still hurts to even think about you. Saying your name makes it worse. I guess writing it does the same. _

_I'm not sure why I'm doing this. Mum said it might help. Actually, what she said was that I should try and talk to you, act like you can hear me. But I felt stupid, talking to an empty room when I knew you weren't there. You should've been there. You should be here, now. It isn't fair._

_I said once that I'd stay with you forever. I meant it, Doctor. I really did. And I'm so sorry that the one promise I never, ever wanted to break was the one that I was forced to. I'm so sorry. For both of us. It isn't fair. Sometimes, I catch myself wishing that Pete – I still have trouble thinking of him as my father – hadn't come back to our reality just in time to save me. It's complicated, the way I'm feeling about this whole affair. But I think the really simple way of putting it is just this: I think I'd rather die with you than live without you. And then I think of how my death probably would've hurt you so much more than simply losing me like this, and I feel guilty for wanting that. I would never wish any of the pain I'm feeling on you. I've got a bad feeling that you're experiencing it anyways, though. And I'm sorry for that. I can't help but feel a bit responsible. And don't even try to tell me it's not my fault, I won't believe you. Just let me take the blame. It helps a little bit. I know it seems completely counterintuitive, but it does._

_I'm not going to kill myself, if you're worrying about that. I did say that I'd rather die with you than live without you. But I suppose I'd rather live without you than die alone._

_I don't have the words to express how much I miss you. How much I need you to be here. Maybe I don't need the words, because maybe you're feeling it, too. Maybe I wouldn't need the words if you were here, because you could just do that mind-meld trick that you do sometimes and then you'd know. _

_I had a thought yesterday. Remember that time we were trapped on a planet that was orbiting a black hole? I started wondering what would've happened if we'd gotten off that planet, but we hadn't managed to find the TARDIS. So we were stuck there, in that time, for the rest of our lives. I'd still have to go back to living a typical, slow life. I'd miss traveling around through time and space with you. And of course I'd miss my mum. But I meant what I said on that planet – being stuck with you wouldn't be so bad. I know for a fact that I'd much rather be trapped in the future with you than stuck in this parallel present with Mum, Mickey, and the man who isn't quite my dad. I think I'd rather be trapped anywhere with you than stuck here with them. I'd even rather be trapped here with you. It's not about where I am, or how agonizingly normal the life I'm being forced to live is. It's about being with you. Or, in this case, not being with you._

_It's much easier to talk to you on paper. I mean, it's never been hard for me to talk to you. You're so sweet, and funny, and brilliant – or, in the words of the version of you I originally met, fantastic. You're my best friend, and it's easier for me to talk to you than it is for me to talk to anyone else. But that's not what I meant. It's easy to talk to you. It's much harder to say the things that matter. It's only now that you're gone (though maybe it would be more accurate to say that I'm gone) that I'm realizing just how many things I should've said to you that I never got around to saying. I thought we had forever._

_I was wrong._

_I feel like I should tell you a little about what's happening here. There's only a little to tell, really. It's been almost two weeks since you lost me. I've spent most of that time in my room. It's a nice room, actually. You remember how rich Pete is. It's nice and big and there's plenty of useless junk for me to throw at the walls when my missing you manifests itself in intense temper tantrums. Mom's always coming in trying to get me to eat, but I'm never hungry. Mickey comes by from time to time. He brings video games and DVDs of our favorite television shows and tries to cheer me up. Sometimes he manages to help a little bit. Other times I lock the door and don't let him in, because sometimes seeing him is just too painful and confusing. He means well. He doesn't know that seeing him makes me feel even more guilty than I already do._

_I don't know what else to say. I guess I've covered the basics. I suppose I could emphasize one point – it isn't fair. None of this is even remotely fair. And I'm not fine. I tell my parents and Mickey otherwise, and I'd probably deny it if you were here, if I were speaking with you face-to-face, but I'm not fine. I'm on the other side of the world from fine. I'm in a separate parallel universe from fine._

_Mum was right. This did help a little. It's not the same as actually being able to talk to you – no, it's nowhere near the same. But it does help a little bit. Not much. But a little._

_All of my love,_

_Rose_

-0-0-0-

Rose pushes the two pieces of lined paper that she's filled with her untidy scrawl, words to him, to the Doctor, across her desk, away from her. She doesn't want to reread what she's written for him. She'll probably never revisit those words, because doing so would probably only add the pain she was feeling while writing them as another layer of misery on top of the pain she's currently feeling. Still, she doesn't throw the papers away. They helped. They really did. Not much, but they did allow her to get rid of a tiny fraction of the weight on her chest. The burden of missing him is still as present as ever. But the burden of all the words she should've said to him but never did is slightly lessened. And the removal of even the slightest bit of her pain is absolutely worth the cramping of her hand and the dark metallic gray stain running down the side of her pinky finger and her hand, created when her skin rubbed against the words she'd already written.

"Rose, honey?" comes her mother's muffled voice from the other side of the door. "Time to go, okay?"

Quickly, she pulls the papers back to her, grabs her pencil, erases her name at the bottom of the page, and scribbles another few lines.

_Oh, yeah – Mum's signed me up for this art class thing. She's trying to ease me back into society or something. She isn't making me get a new job yet, but I'm sure that'll be next. Personally, I'd rather stay right here, like I have since I got to this place. I'd rather stay here in the dark, wishing myself to wherever you are. But I suppose this isn't so bad. I've always liked to draw. I don't know. Mum thinks it'll help, and maybe she's right. She was right about this. _

_All of my love,_

_Rose_

-0-0-0-

Their assignment is still life.

The class is gathered around a table with a bunch of small objects – apples, flowers in pots, little statues – on it. There are perhaps twenty students, and the table isn't that large, so they're packed in with very little elbow room between them. Rose can barely stand being in the same room as other people. She certainly can't handle being in close quarters with them, not right now.

So she takes a little jade horse from the table and moves to a smaller desk, taking several erasers and pencils with her. This earns her a raised eyebrow from the teacher, an small aging woman with dark hair streaked with gray named Jess, but she doesn't say anything. Rose doesn't need her permission, anyways. She can't stay there, looking at all those people. Not when there's a tiny redhead wearing a Union Jack t-shirt just like the one she'd worn when they went back to the London Blitz in 1941. Not when the glanced a blonde girl and dark-haired boy keep exchanging remind her so much of the ones she used to exchange with him. Not when there's a brown-haired boy in square glasses just like the ones he wears and a black leather jacket just like the one he never used to take off. Or maybe she's just going crazy, seeing him everywhere. Maybe those glances are nothing like the ones she used to exchange with him. Maybe the glasses and the jacket don't resemble his at all. But it's not all her imagination. She's certainly not imagining the tattoo on the arm of a girl with spikey hair, dark eye makeup, and a t-shirt for some rock band Rose doesn't know. A tattoo of two words in ornate black print.

_**BAD WOLF**_

That was what did it for her, really – those two words appearing once again in her life. Before, they were a message, telling her she could get back to him. But not anymore. Now, they're just the universe's way of torturing her to insanity, assaulting her with constant reminders of the life she will never be able to return to. Back then, they were a gift. Now, they're simply cruel.

So she sits apart from the group, staring at the jade statue of the horse. She hears the scratching as the pencil moves across the paper, guided by her hand, but she isn't watching the paper. She's watching the subject and trusting her hands to coordinate with what she's seeing.

"Miss Tyler?"

Rose starts slightly at the sudden voice, but recovers quickly and glances up to see Jess looking down at her desk. "What are you drawing?" she asks gently, her eyes fixed on the paper.

"A horse," Rose replies simply, wanting to use as few words as possible. In reply, Jess just raises her eyebrows quizzically, and Rose looks down at what she's drawn for the first time.

Because it isn't a horse.

It's a face. A man's face. Just a rough sketch with the details left to be filled in, but very, very recognizable. The slim features, wide eyes, eager grin, hair that sticks up in the front… he's unmistakable.

"The assignment is still life, honey," Jess tells her.

"I know," Rose replies irritably, picking up her pencil and resuming her sketch, but this time she watches herself making the motions, carefully and consciously filling in the details of the face she knows so well. "This is still life."

"Honey –"

"He's not moving, is he?" she points out without looking up. "And he's alive, yes?"

"I don't know," Jess replies. "Maybe you just made him up in your head."

"No." Rose shakes her head, blinking forcefully to shove back tears as she adds a bright, wild sparkle to his eyes. "I wouldn't do that."

"Alright, then," Jess says, backing up – she seems, Rose notes, to be a rather submissive person. "I'll let you get on with it." And she turns and walks back to the table where the other students sit. And Rose is left sitting there, adding all of the tiny little details that make him _him_, contemplating the meaning of still life. Because it doesn't really describe what it means, does it? The things you draw when working in still life aren't alive. No, it more accurately describes what Rose is drawing now. Still, but alive.

Still in her life.

That's it, then. How she'll cope, or perhaps how she'll fall apart more efficiently. She won't let go of him. She'll keep him in her life in as many ways as possible. She'll hang on as tightly as she can. After all, there's no way that she'll ever move on – why would she even waste time trying?

So she'll hold onto him. She'll keep him in her life. She'll remember him, no matter how much it hurts, because that pain is hers. It's the only thing left connecting her to him, and she'll be damned if she's going to lose the last piece of him she has.

So over the course of the art class, she finishes that sketch of him. She creates him perfectly, the wildness of his hair, the shine in his eyes, the goofy grin. And she draws him again, this time with a much more serious expression, wearing his glasses as he peers at the screen on the TARDIS controls. And then she draws him again, this time the version of him she originally met, remembering and replicating his face the first time she ever saw him, the dead serious (but somehow still bright) expression on his face as he uttered the first word he ever said to her: _run._

She draws him three times in a two-hour art class. And in the bottom left-hand corner of each drawing, she carefully writes two words, even though it hurts. In the corner of each drawing, she writes his name.

**The Doctor.**


	3. Chapter 3

"Rose!"

She doesn't jump at the sound of the voice. No, she's too far gone to jump. Too distant, too isolated, too removed for anything in this universe to startle her. Or to affect her at all, really. She's lost in the deep recesses of her own mind, lost in memories of a place so close, and yet so very far away.

She's so entangled in that place that she barely even registers the familiar voice, barely even notices the frantic footsteps as Mickey runs towards her.

"Where've you been?" he demands, slowing his pace as he nears her. "I've been looking everywhere for you. Hours you've been gone, and you're not answering your phone, your mum's having a fit –"

Abruptly, he stops speaking. He must've finally understood. He must've finally realized exactly where they are.

"Oh," he says softly, and she just nods in agreement. Because they know this corner, both of them. It's not the same corner, of course, not really. It's just a shade, a pale imitation. But it looks the same, and she can practically see the TARDIS just beside her, her beautiful blue box, tucked away on the street corner where he meant for it to spend the rest of its life. Where perhaps it would've spent the rest of its life if she hadn't been so bloody determined to return to him. In the time she's been standing here, many thoughts have crossed her mind, and one of them was a half-wish that she'd given up. That she'd just left the TARDIS to gather dust like he told her to. The end result would've been the same, right? She'd still be separated from him for the rest of her life, and at least she'd been in her own reality. But as soon as that thought began, she stopped it. Because if she hadn't been so bloody determined, she would've missed out on a year. A beautiful, wonderful, magnificent, fantastic year of her life, a year with him. And he would've died. She doesn't remember exactly what happened, but that much she's almost certain of: she saved his life by going back.

This is the corner where they now stand, the little slot next to the brick wall with the rusty metal chair long since discarded. Identical in every way to the corner where they stood a complete year ago now. Where Rose slumped against the side of the TARDIS, listless and despondent. Where Mickey came running, all smiles and enthusiasm, lost when he saw her tears and wrapped her in his arms.

This is the corner where the TARDIS came when the Doctor sent her home from Satellite Five. This is where he sent her when he saved her life, and this is where she left from when she refused to be saved.

That wasn't an option this time, though. The second she arrived in the alternate reality, the rift closed. She was sealed there, stuck, trapped, stranded. And she sobbed and screamed and slammed her hands against that damn white wall, demanding to be let back, demanding to go home to him. But she couldn't. She couldn't go running back to him, however much she wanted to. It wasn't possible, isn't possible. Simple as that. Not possible.

Over the years with him, her definition of the word 'possible' changed significantly. More than half the things they dealt with were supposed to be impossible, but that didn't stop them. So today, there are very few things that Rose Tyler would deem 'impossible'.

Unfortunately, this is one of them.

"I'm sorry," Mickey says softly, reaching out to her, but she shies away from his touch. "Why?" she chokes, and though there are no tears on her cheeks, they are present in her voice. "It's not fair," she cries. "Why've I got to – why'd he – why'd it have to – why?" The last is less of a word and more of a wail, more of a guttural cry, the vocalization of her need for answers. "Where's he gone, huh?" she calls out, seemingly to her surroundings. "Why'd he have to go and – and _leave _me –"

Again, Mickey reaches for her, and again, she inches away from him. It's not his touch she needs. Her back is pressed against the brick wall; squeezing her eyes shut, she slides to the ground and sits there, tucking her knees up close to her chest and resting her head there. Her blonde hair falls in waves, forming a sheer yellow curtain between her and the world.

"Rose, I'm sure he didn't –" Mickey begins, but she interrupts, cuts him off before he can go any further. "Go," she instructs simply, her voice dark and broken and remote.

"Rose –"

"Just _go,_" she pleads, glancing up at him through her hair. "Please, go."

He doesn't say a word, just turns and walks away with his back hunched and his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. A part of her feels guilty for sending him away like that. There's a lot of guilty feelings that she associates with Mickey these days, and that's actually why she told him to leave. She can't deal with that right now. She's already juggling so many emotions. She can't add another, let alone something like guilt, to the mix. Not in her fragile state.

She sits there for a while, on the ground, hugging her legs to her chest, resting her forehead on her knees. She sits there, wishing herself home, wishing that this really was that same corner from before, wishing she had her own TARDIS so she could go back in time and stop all this from happening. Not that he'd ever let her, though. Paradox and all that. She'd do it anyways, though, just to have one last minute with him. She'd do anything.

She sits there until she feels tears starting to drip from her eyes, hanging off her eyelashes and then dropping into her lap. And that's when she hears him.

"Oh, don't do that."

Immediately, she squeezes her eyes shut, because she knows how this works. It's not the first time it's happened and she doubts it'll be the last. She hopes it won't be the last. These moments, however painful, are the only things that keep her going.

"Why not?" she asks softly. "It hurts. Humans cry when they're hurt."

"I know," he replies. "But still, Rose. Please don't cry over me."

The tears only come faster at the sound of her name, slipping out from between her eyelids. Only he can say her name like that, a thousand mixed messages and muddled feelings in the space of a single word. She has to wonder if he knows what his voice does to her. If he's aware of the effect he can have.

"I want to," she gasps. "It helps. You remember the Cybermen, don't you?" It's phrased like a question, but she knows he remembers. Of course he remembers. If she remembers, so does he. "They get rid of emotions," she continues weakly without waiting for a response. "Because – because it hurts. That's what you said. I – I could do that. Well, not _that, _that, but something similar. Go numb, you know? Then it wouldn't hurt as much." She shakes her head passionately. "But I don't want to. I want to hurt. It helps me remember."

"That's my Rose," he says proudly, and she feels the weight of another tear clinging to her eyelashes. "You're right, you know. You've got to hurt. It's part of who you are. It's part of what makes you human."

"Got to hurt," she echoes. "It's the only way I can hold onto you. Got to hurt because I don't want to lose you."

"You won't lose me," he says, and the gentle breeze that pushes at her blonde waves almost feels like his fingers in her hair. "You'll see me again."

"Not true," she whimpers, desperately wanting to lean into him, feel his arms around her, warm and steady. But she can't. She knows he can't, because there's nothing there. He's not real. He's never real.

"No," he admits reluctantly, his voice soft and sad. "But it's what you needed to hear."

"Don't go," she whispers, even though she knows he's not really there at all. He's just a voice, just a manifestation of a mixture of memories and pain. Just a creation of her mind, a reassurance, a heartbeat of sanity in this mad, frenzied world. False sanity, of course. But she'll take what she can get.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says; she can almost feel his breath on her ear as he whispers, "Open your eyes."

"I can't," she replies. "If I open my eyes, you'll go away."

"I'll stay."

"Not true," she counters. "You never stay. I look for you but you're never there."

"I'm here."

"Not true."

"I'll always be here."

"Only in my mind."

"Of course," he agrees. "Of course, in your mind."

"You're not real."

"I resent that," he tells her. "Why does being in your mind have to mean I'm not real?"

"You're not making sense," she murmurs.

"Oh, I never make sense," he replies, and she can practically see the grin growing on his face. "Come on, Rose. Open your eyes."

"Can't."

"But you have to," he insists. "Rose, the world is turning. You can't just go back and live moments again anymore. You only get one shot at every second of your life. If you keep your eyes closed, you might miss it."

She wants to reply, to cry out that she doesn't care if she misses this because it isn't her life, these aren't her seconds, her moments. They're someone else's, and she's just trapped in them, and she'll give anything to get out. And these precious moments with him… that's as close as she gets to getting out. As close as she gets to home.

Still, she opens her eyes. She always does. Because speaking to him is a dream, a wonderful, painful dream. But sooner or later, you always have to wake up.

So she opens her eyes. And she ventures a glance to the space beside her, the space where his voice came from.

She knew he wasn't there from the start. She always knows from the start. But still, every time she looks for him and he's gone, it pulls at her heart just the same. A choked, anguished gasp escapes her lips and she drops her head again, unable or unwilling to look any longer at that space where he is not.

-0-0-0-

_Doctor, _

_I'm seeing you everywhere. Well, not seeing you. Hearing you. Your voice in my ear. You talk to me, help me. Reassure me. It doesn't happen every day, but sometimes when I'm alone, you come to me. Sometimes I think I can feel you, too, and one time I even thought I saw you. But I was wrong, because it's not you. It's nothing. It's just my mind playing tricks on me, making me see what I want to see. It's just my imagination. You're not here. And even though I know that, I still let myself forget. When you come to me… that's the only time I'm really alive. In this hell of a life, those are the moments I live for._

_I just feel so alone, Doctor, like there's no one in the world who's there for me. Is this how you feel all the time? Last of your kind and all. If it is, I'm sorry. God, I'm so, so sorry. I guess I never really understood, but I think I do now. And it's not even the same, because I've got Mum and Mickey, and Pete, I guess, and I'm living on my own planet surrounded by my own species. Whereas you… you're completely alone in the universe. Last of the Time Lords. There really is no one._

_Well, there was me. _

_God, I'm so sorry. I know I'm apologizing a lot in these letters, but I have to get it out. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I never understood until now just how lonely you must be. I'm sorry that I didn't do more to help you. I'm sorry that I got stuck here and left you completely alone. _

_Remember how I was kind of mad at you at first when we met Sarah Jane and I learned that I wasn't the only girl you've ever shown the universe? I changed my mind. There were others before me, Doctor, and please, please make sure there are others after me. I can't bear the thought of you completely alone. So please, find someone else. Another girl to awe with all of time and space.__ Don't forget me, but find someone else. I think if my loss sends you back into the same lonely state you were in before you met me, the guilt might just bury me alive._

_People have always associated emotions with the heart, Doctor, and you've got two. Does that mean you feel everything twice as intensely as we do? Twice the love, twice the pain, twice the loneliness? If it does, again, I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you, and I hate to think that you're in pain because of me, especially if you do feel everything twice. I have a hard enough time dealing with the pain of losing you, and I've only got one heart. I can barely imagine trying to cope with that much pain doubled. _

_I guess you know how to be lonely. But I know for a fact that isn't the only thing you know how to do. You can be happy, too, and clever, and funny, and loved. Please, Doctor, for me, be loved. Find someone else who makes you happy, and don't let her get away like I did._

_All of my love,_

_Rose_


	4. Chapter 4

_Doctor,_

_You're everywhere._

_Mum doesn't approve, of course. She signed me up for that art class because she thought it would be a good way to engage me in an activity that doesn't have to do with you. Because these days, it seems like all I do is talk to you, write to you, think of you, and dream of you. She signed me up for the art classes so I could do something that only had to do with me. Instead, I added another one to the list – drawing you._

_That's all I do during the classes now, no matter what the assignment is. I move to my spot in the corner and I draw you. And sometimes when I come home I keep on drawing you. It helps, I think. To see you, actually see you. Well, not actually see you, but the closest thing. Because when you come to talk to me, I can't look. As soon as I look, you vanish. You're just a voice in my head, and even though I know you're not there, you stay as long as I can't prove it. But as soon as I look, it's like you were never there at all. Which, of course, you weren't. But a girl can dream._

_I've been going to these classes for a few weeks now. They're every Wednesday and Saturday, for two hours in the afternoon. It's plenty of time to draw you a thousand times over. So you're everywhere now. In my room, everywhere I look, I see you. Drawings all over the walls (I even taped some to the ceiling). Mum thinks it's a bad idea. She thinks I should move on, because I'm never going to get you back, never going to even see you again. She insists that I need to figure out how to have a life apart from you, and that hanging onto you like this will only hurt me. She says refusing to let you go will tear me apart. And maybe she's right. But you know what?_

_I don't think I care._

_Because really, I've got nothing to lose. No life in this world, even one considered incredible by human standards, will ever compare to what we had. We were brilliant, Doctor, absolutely brilliant. The stuff of legends. The Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS, all of space and time at our fingertips. But it's not just that, it's everything. You showed me so much, and I don't just mean all those times and places and people, other planets and bizarre races (metal men and werewolves and living plastic and Queen Victoria, Doctor, Queen Victoria! I did get her to say it after all, but you never paid me that ten quid.). I mean the things you taught me, too, things about living better, being better. Things like standing up for what's right, and refusing to give up, and never, ever letting go._

_Never say never ever. That's what you told me. But I think, just this once, we'll have to make an exception. Because I am never, ever letting you go._

_Whenever I'm feeling particularly lost and lonely, I go to places that meant something to us back in the day. Like that roof where we sat when we first came back to my time, right before that phony spaceship crashed into Big Ben. Or that alley outside Mum's old apartment at the Powell Estate where we'd usually park the TARDIS. One time I even went and sat next to that shop you blew up when we first met, the one where all those plastic mannequins tried to kill me and you saved my life (I'm back working there, by the way – I was right, Mum did decide to make me get a job about a week and a half ago. It's not like we need the money. I think it's part of her big plan to force me to create a brand new, socially acceptable life for myself in this universe). See, there's this basketball court where I sat with Mickey for a while a year ago, after you sent me home from Satellite Five. In my home universe, it's got BAD WOLF spray-painted across it in gigantic yellow letters. It didn't have that in this universe, so I got a can of yellow spray paint and I did it myself. I didn't have the time, the patience, or the spray-painting skills to do the other versions of BAD WOLF all around the walls of the court, but that one is enough. It helps me pretend I'm back home, helps me pretend that there's some hope of getting back to you._

_I've found that when I go someplace that meant something to us when we were traveling together, someplace that reminds me of you, there's a better chance that you'll come and talk to me. Sometimes it doesn't work, but sometimes it does. The problem is, I've got pretty specific set of places I go when I mysteriously disappear from the house, and Mickey's figured most of them out. So when I vanish, he normally manages to find me. The basketball court is particularly risky, because he was there with me. And today, he found me there while I was talking to you._

_He was confused, wanted to know who I was talking to. I was a little bit mad at him, because as soon as he showed up, you left. But of course, I had to explain it to him anyways. He didn't understand. I tried to explain that I wasn't psychotic or delusional, that I knew you weren't really there, that I was just pretending, like when you're a kid and you've got an imaginary friend. He thought I was hallucinating, but that isn't the right word. It's not a hallucination. You're not a hallucination. A hallucination is the world playing tricks on you, sight and sound bending to mess with your mind. You're just my imagination. Just my mind giving me a little bit of help when I need it most. I tried to tell him that, but he didn't understand. I think he's gone to tell my mum, and she'll probably be absolutely livid. You know how she is. Her hormones are all out of whack, too, which doesn't help._

_Oh, yeah, almost forgot to mention – Mum's pregnant. We just found out a few days ago. Pete's so excited to be a father. Just like I'm not sure if he counts as my dad, he's not sure if I count as his daughter. But this is real, this is undeniable, this is… his. I'm just the product of a dead man who was maybe almost him._

_Confession to make. I said I was working in the shop earlier in this letter. That's a lie. Truth is, I'm trying to get a position at Torchwood. Before you say anything, Doctor, let me explain. I know you don't like them, don't approve of their methods, and honestly, I can't entirely trust them, either. They tore us apart, Doctor. They split us up. The Cybermen couldn't do it. The devil itself and a black hole couldn't do it. Not even the Daleks could do it. But Torchwood managed it. But they're different in this reality. They're better. And we're going to make them better, Mickey and me. He's trying for a position there, too. And it's going well, I guess. London branch wanted us, but Canary Wharf… too many bad memories. I couldn't work there. So they shipped us over to Torchwood 3, which is Cardiff, right on top of the rift. There's a bloke called Owen Harper there, and a woman called Toshiko Sato, and the woman in charge is called Suzie Costello. I don't entirely trust her – there's something a bit off about her, but I don't know. Maybe that's just me. Owen is a bit irritating… okay, more than a bit… but Tosh seems nice enough and Ianto, the bloke who brings us coffee, is really sweet. Overall, it's a good group that we'll be joining. You'd like them, Doctor. They may own a few too many guns for your taste, but they're good people. _

"Rose!" There's a harsh, repetitive banging at the door that accompanies the shrill voice. "Rose, let me in!"

_Someone's knocking at the door. That'll be Mum now. I guess I've got to go explain to her that I'm not crazy, just lonely. Try to come and talk sometime soon, preferably sometime when Mickey's not around. I don't know how long I can go without hearing your voice. In this whole wide parallel universe, it's the only sound worth listening to._

"Rose Tyler, you open this door _right now_!"

_I've got to go now. I miss you so much, Doctor. And I'll never let go._

_All of my love, _

_Rose_

Quickly, she pulls out the desk drawer where she's keeping all of her letters to him and tucks what she's just written inside, pushing it closed before she gets up and walks over to the door, unlocking and opening it wide. Outside it is Jackie Tyler, looking flushed and irritated. Instantly, Rose is on the defensive, a hand on her hip as she stands in the doorway, deliberately blocking it. "Something you need, Mum?"

"There's something we need to talk about," she replies, stepping to the side and trying to come in; Rose mimics her movements, stepping to the side and blocking her. "And what's that?" she asks, though of course she already knows.

"These… _hallucinations _of yours," her mother replies, saying the word like it's something vile.

"They're not hallucinations," Rose groans. "They're just… memories, is all. My imagination mashing a bunch of memories of him together until it's almost like the real him."

"How's that different from a hallucination?" Again, Jackie tries to enter, and again, Rose blocks her. "It just is, Mum!" she cries, exasperated. Sighing, she attempted the same tact she'd used with Mickey. "You remember how when you're a kid, you've got all these imaginary friends? And you talk to them, and it's almost like they're real because you give them personalities, and you know what they're like and what they'd say, so you can have whole conversations even though they don't exist?"

"It's completely different from that, Rose," Jackie replies.

"But it's not!" Rose shouts. "It's exactly the same, don't you see?" She sighed again, squeezing her eyes shut. "It's like what you told me to do. Talk to him and pretend like he can hear me. That's what I'm doing."

"But you're not, sweetheart," Jackie insists gently. "You're pretending he can talk _back._"

"Like an imaginary friend," Rose repeats.

"You're nearly twenty-one! Rose, most people your age don't have imaginary friends."

"Well, I'm not most people," she snaps. "The Doctor showed me so many incredible things, Mum. Such wonder and beauty and love. And danger, too, plenty of that. But it's worth it. It's worth anything and everything. And if you'd seen all the things I've seen, you wouldn't be telling me to let it go. You'd be telling me to hold onto it with all the strength I've got, with every fiber of my being, just hang on! Because very few people get to see that. Very few people get to feel like that, to – to love like that. And anyone who does should consider herself very, very lucky. And even when fate rips her away from the person and the life she's come to love, she's still one of the lucky ones, because of the time she had, even though it wasn't nearly enough." She sniffled, looked down at the floor, took a breath, and continued. "It's a tough act to follow, that sort of a life. But I've got to follow it, just like Sarah Jane Smith had to follow it. But I don't have to forget. No power in the universe – in any universe – could ever compel me to forget. I'm holding onto him, Mum, in every way that I possibly can, because I know that's the best thing to do. It's what he'd tell me to do. And it's the only way I'll ever be anything close to happy."

By the end of her speech, she's breathing heavily, and tears are shining in her eyes. She can almost hear his voice in her ear, telling her how proud he is of her, of how far she's come, of the woman she's become. The woman she's become because of him.

Jackie is silent for a while (the Doctor would get a kick out of that, would probably make some comment about how there's a first time for everything or something like that). When she finally speaks, she murmurs, "I – I know a good psychiatrist –"

"For God's sake, Mum," Rose cuts in angrily, "I'm not _crazy_!"

"Of course not," Jackie replies, perhaps a second too quickly. "He's a therapist, sweetheart. Just someone to talk to."

"Right. Someone to talk to." Rose nods. "And you really think that if I start talking about time travel and parallel universes, he's not going to phone the nearest loony bin?"

"Just try it," Jackie urges. "And if you say something he doesn't believe, we'll back you up. Mickey and Pete and I, we'll tell him you're telling the truth."

Rose sighs. "Fine," she breathes after a second. "I'll try it. Once. Just the once."

"Fine," Jackie echoes. "I'll, ah – I'll go now, then."

"Please do," Rose replies; as she speaks, she steps backwards into her room and closes the door without another word.

She spends the next hour working on a daring project she's attempting, trying to draw one half of a head as the new Doctor's face and the other half as the old Doctor's. It's not going to badly, to be honest. After that, she moves to her bed and simply sits, thinking, dwelling, wishing. She sits there until the sky grows dark and the noises of the house fade to silence. And then everything is quiet and the digital clock next to her bed reads **11:52**, she puts her head on the pillow and closes her eyes. She falls asleep in her clothes, fully expecting to have the same old dream again. After all, she's had it every night without fail since they were separated.

But tonight, her dream is different.

Tonight, it isn't a collection of words from her to the Doctor. Tonight, it isn't a montage, an assortment. Tonight, it isn't random.

Tonight, everything makes sense.

-0-0-0-

**Ooh! What's Rose Tyler dreaming about now? Per usual, I'm going to make you wait another week to find out... muahaha. I'm so evil. By the way, Happy Halloween! Eat lots of candy to drown the Doctor/Rose-induced depression that I'm putting you through. Mwah!**


	5. Chapter 5

_There are no words to describe this._

_She sees… everything. All of existence burning through her mind. And she wonders how she could have possibly survived her whole life so blinded, her perception of reality so very, very narrow. All her life, she's only seen a tiny bit of everything, what is immediate, but there's so much more than meets the human eye. Layers, so many layers. Millions, billions, trillions of them, and she sees them all. She sees how things were. How they are. How they someday could be. All of it, everything at once, simultaneous in her mind. And she feels… so strong. Like some sort of a god. She is power incarnate._

_She sees all. She controls all. All of time and space, everything that ever was, is, and will be. She has tapped into the vortex and taken control, and she knows if she wanted to, she could cause the sun to rise and set. She could reshape the world to her liking, wipe the slate clean and start again. She could destroy and she could conquer._

_But she won't._

_Because she could also keep the universe on the course it's meant to be on. She could protect and she could save. She can protect and she can save. And that's what she wants to do. What she must do._

_No commands are necessary. The TARDIS knows her mind. They are one in their thoughts, their desires, their love. The TARDIS takes her where she wants and needs to go without her having to ask._

_The doors fly open to reveal Floor 500 of Satellite Five as she's never seen it before. All the layers, so many layers. She can see the empty space that was here before the satellite was built. She can see herself and the Doctor back when they shut down the news station which used to operate from here. She can see all the purposes the satellite will be put to in the future. She can see the empty space that will be here after the humans have gone, when the Earth burns alone. _

_But one thing is constant, unlayered, solid. One thing is as it always has been to her._

_Him._

_She sees his eyes widen, sees shock and fear register on his face as he sees her. "What have you done?" he cries._

"_I looked into the TARDIS," she replies in her beautiful, layered voice, "and the TARDIS looked into me."_

"_You looked into the time vortex," he says as the truth dawns on him. "Rose, no one's meant to see that!"_

"_This is the abomination!" comes a mechanical voice from a screen. _

"_Exterminate!" a Dalek shouts, and she pulls her attention away from her Doctor and focuses on it. It fires a single blast at her, but she simply lifts her hand and it is deflected. She is far too strong for that. Far too powerful._

"_I am the Bad Wolf," she tells the Dalek, the Doctor, the room. "I create myself. I take the words…" Again, she lifts her hand, this time directing her attention on the large __**BAD WOLF CORPORATION **__sign. "I scatter them in time and space…" Suddenly, the words __**BAD WOLF **__are not layered. They are constant, just like the Doctor. They float, little pieces of herself, of the power within her, off the sign and vanish into the air. "A message to lead myself here."_

"_Rose, you've got to stop this!" the Doctor insists. "You've got to stop this now! You've got the time vortex running through your head, you're gonna burn!"_

"_I want you safe," she tells him. "My Doctor. Protected from the false god."_

"_You cannot hurt me," says the voice from the screen, the Dalek emperor. "I am immortal."_

"_You are tiny!" she snaps, because he is. He claims to be a god, claims to be all-powerful, but he is nothing, nothing next to her! "I __can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence, and I divide them." Again, she lifts her hand, and the Dalek who tried to shoot her earlier dissolves into the lovely gold particles that line the spaces between the layers. _

"_Everything must come to dust," she sighs as the Daleks around her dissolve into gold as well. "All things. Everything dies." She brings her hands up at her sides, and all the Daleks around them dissolve. "The Time War ends."_

"_I will not die!" the emperor cries shrilly. "I cannot die!" But he speaks no more, because her eyes flash brilliantly gold, and he – and outside, his entire fleet – become nothing more than the same shining golden dust._

"_Rose, you've done it," the Doctor says from the floor. "Now stop. Just let it go."_

"_How can I let go of this?" she asks him, and with her power she reaches out, searching for the other she knows needs her help. "I bring life." She finds him, feels his cold, still body as though it were her own, and softly lets some of the gold out of her into him. She knows it's worked when he gasps his second first breath, his eyes snapping open as he looks out on the world he left. The world she, with all her power, brought him back to. That is what she is now – a force of good, of life, of light!_

"_But this is wrong!" the Doctor insists, but she doesn't understand – how could anything be more right? "You can't control life and death!"_

"_But I can," she insists. "The sun and the moon, the day and night… but why do they hurt?" She's suddenly aware of the pounding of her heart, far faster than it ever should, far faster than is natural. Her head is aching – no, it's screaming, crying out in bitter agony because the knowledge burns in her mind like fire, bright and strong and deadly. And though her eyes glow like golden stars she can still cry, and perfect human tears drip down her cheeks._

"_The power's gonna kill you, and it's my fault!" She can practically feel his guilt, wants to tell him that no, he's not to blame. This was her choice, and she would do it all over again._

"_I can see… everything…" she says, desperate to make him understand just how amazing this all is for her. "All that is… all that was… all that ever could be…"_

"_That's what I see," he replies, standing. "All the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?"_

_She nods mutely, because as he says it she realizes that it's true. It does. "My head," she chokes, barely able to speak. The power is strangling her._

"_Come here," he says._

"_It's killing me," she gasps._

"_I think you need a Doctor." By this time, he's standing just before her, and she can almost feel his wonderful stability reaching out and calming the dangerous chaos that is the power raging within her. Slowly, gently, he bends his head; she turns her face up towards his, and their lips meet in the middle. It's sweet and beautiful and so perfectly human, and she can't help but think it feels even more right than the brilliant power she'd wielded a moment ago. And as they kiss she can feel that power leaving her, draining out through her glowing eyes and into his, slipping out between her lips and into his. And when he pulls away it continues until it's all inside him, and, completely human again, she closes her eyes and succumbs to oblivion in his arms._

-0-0-0-

Rose jolts awake, breathing heavily, her wide eyes free of tears for the first time in a while. Her mind is reeling because it all make sense now, all the memories she was missing when she awoke on the TARDIS, the unexplained victory against impossible odds, the lovely singing and golden lights. The heart of the TARDIS. She looked into the heart of the TARDIS and gained unspeakable power. And it would've killed her, but he drew it out of her with –

With a _kiss. _

They kissed. They kissed, and she never remembered. But he must've known all along. All this time with her and he never said a word. Why? Why wouldn't he tell her?

She doesn't waste a second. She jumps out of bed and runs over to her desk, grabbing clean sheets of lined paper and her favorite mechanical pencil. Without even bothering to take the time to sit down in her desk chair, she begins to write.

_Doctor,_

_I remember._

_Everything, all of it, everything I did last year on Satellite Five. I just dreamed it. After you sent me home, I figured out a way to open the TARDIS and I looked into her heart, and all of a sudden I could see everything. Every time that ever was, is, and will be, just like you can. And I came back and destroyed the Daleks, and the power I'd gained would've killed me, but you saved me. I saved you, and then you saved me._

_I suppose it might've just been a dream. But I know it wasn't. I know it was the memories I lost from that day. And it explains everything, like how we beat the Daleks even though the odds were impossible, and how the words 'Bad Wolf' kept showing up wherever we went. I did that, Doctor. That was me. I sent them there as a message, so the me in the past would see them and know that she – that I, rather – could get back to you. It's pretty complicated when you think about it. If I hadn't sent those words back in time, I never would have known that I could come forward in time again to get back to you, and I never would've had the chance to send them back in the first place! Time travel gives me a headache when I try to understand it. How do you possibly cope?_

_But tell me this – why didn't you ever say anything? Why didn't you tell me what I'd done, what I'd become? Why didn't you tell me that I saved the world, and – more importantly – that I saved your life? Dammit, Doctor, why didn't you tell me that we kissed?_

_Oh, my God, Doctor – Jack! We just left him there! I brought him back to life when I had the power of the time vortex, but I never told you, and then I passed out, and we left without him! And then I never brought it up because I didn't remember bringing him back to life, and I guess I assumed that he'd died because the Daleks did get past him, and it did seem that way – well, I guess it seemed that way because it was that way. But still, Doctor, we stranded him in the future, all alone in that place! How could we do that? You must've not know that he was alive again – you wouldn't leave him there on purpose._

_Would you?_

_I wish I wasn't being so suspicious. I wish I had more faith in you. I do have faith in you, Doctor, so much. But, though I hate myself for it, I have to wonder – did you know what I'd done? You're so clever. You could've figured it out. But you left anyway. Why?_

_I'm overthinking this, aren't I? You probably had no idea he was alive. I'm sorry for doubting you, but I've got a policy for these letters. A number one rule, you know? And that's that I have to tell you whatever comes into my mind. No reservations, no secrets. No lies. You'll never read these anyways, so why should I keep secrets? But anyway, that's the rule. I say what I'm thinking. And I'm sorry, Doctor, but right now I'm thinking that maybe you did know that he was alive. Maybe you did leave him behind deliberately. And maybe you had a very good reason for doing that. After all, I suppose people aren't meant to come back from the dead._

_I guess I'll never know._

_All of my love,_

_Rose_


	6. Chapter 6

More than three months since she was torn away from him, and Rose Tyler still finds herself depending on dreams.

There's more variety in the images that visit her at night these days. She still gets the standard montage, but sometimes there's happier stuff, too. Several times, she's dreamed of the impossible planet, of the misery that struck her down as she was taken away from him, of the euphoria that filled her when she learned he was alright, of the pure joy that emanated from her as she stepped onto the TARDIS and saw him standing there, smiling at her. She dreams of Satellite Five quite often, of the Bad Wolf, of his kiss. She dreams of the silliest, most insignificant things – eating breakfast together in the TARDIS kitchen, laughing at some stupid joke he's made, the way he'd always push buttons with his Converse-clad feet while flying the TARDIS. The brush of his fingers against hers.

Most people don't really think of it this way, but when you lose something you really loved, it's not just the big, all-important things that you miss. No, it's the little things that truly claw at your heart, eat away at your very being. The little things that you never noticed, never really thought to appreciate. Those are the things that you long for the most. She'd kill to hear his voice one more time, picking up speed as he babbles in techno-speak that she can't make heads or tails of; to watch him twirl his sonic screwdriver around when he pulls it out of his pocket in an effort to impress her; to accidentally bump against him as they experience a particularly rough ride through the time vortex. All those little things she never thought twice about. They seem so very significant now.

But that's not what she dreamt of last night. Last night, she dreamt something entirely new.

She can't describe it, can't even begin to try. It had no substance, no physical form. No sight nor scent nor taste nor texture. It was nothing but a feeling. An impossibly powerful feeling. An urge, a need, a driving force. She'd go so far as to call it a message.

Well, it was a little more than that.

No sight nor scent nor taste nor texture.

But one tiny little sound.

His voice. Far more tangible and real than it ever is when she imagines him. Just a whisper, but so, so, close.

"_Rose..."_

She doesn't know what, how, or why.

"_Rose… Rose."_

But she knows where she needs to go.

"_Rose."_

In an instant, she's out of bed. Twenty seconds later, she's dragged out the black bag she keeps under her bed and is tossing clothes in it without any thought more complicated than the need to get to where she has to be. Once she's finished packing, though, she has a plan. It's still early – her mum and Pete probably aren't up yet. She'll grab the keys and take the car, slip out unnoticed. She'll send them a text from the road, just to let them know she's alright. No more detail than that, though. She doesn't need them. She just needs –

"Rose."

Her eyes snap shut immediately. She doesn't have to think about it – it's instinctive. "It's okay," she says. "I know. I'm coming."

"Not like this." His voice sounds closer now, and she can almost hear the springs of her mattress squeaking as he sits down. "Rose, tell them. They'll help you."

"I don't need them," she replies. "Just you."

"You can't have me," he says regretfully.

"But the dream –"

"Doesn't make it any more possible for me to get to you without ripping apart two universes," he interrupts. "You know that. I'm sorry."

"Come anyway," she chokes out.

She could swear she can feel his breath on her neck, his fingers sweeping her untidy hair back. "I'm sorry," he says again, and his voice is coming from right next to your ear. "I can't. They're all you've got. You have to trust them."

"I can't," she says emphatically. "They won't believe me – Mum already thinks I'm mad since she heard I was imagining you –"

"They're your family, Rose," he whispers, and her name in his voice still sends a chill through her. "They'll believe you. They'll support you."

"You think so?"

"I know so," he replies. "Jackie and Pete and Mickey the Idiot." She allows herself a small, strained laugh at his nickname for her ex-boyfriend. "You need them, Rose," he tells her. "You can't do this alone."

She nods, accepting it; and, clinging to that tiny scrap of hope he and the dream had given her, she turns her head and opens her eyes. Because maybe, just this once, he'll be there.

But he isn't.

A gasped sob escapes her lips, and for a moment, she loses herself once again in the pain of being apart from him. But she composes herself quickly, wipes the tears from her cheeks and steadies her breathing. And she pulls her door open, wakes her mum and Pete and tells them to get downstairs, and calls Mickey on her cell.

"Rose." His voice is heavy with sleep over the phone. "It's not even six yet."

"I'm sorry," she replies. "But I need you to come over."

She can almost see him sitting up, frowning. "What is it?"

"Just come," she urges. "It's important. Just trust me."

There's a pause. Finally, he replies, "Alright. I'll be right over."

-0-0-0-

Fifteen minutes later, she's sitting in the living room, on the couch, across from her mum, Pete, and Mickey. There's a fire in the fireplace, casting a warm yellow glow over the room, and though it's nothing like the greenish gold that illuminates the inside of the TARDIS, she can't help but be reminded of that. And of her dream. She can almost hear his voice again, echoing inside her mind, her name again and again in that haunted, distant whisper… _"Rose…" _

"I had this dream," she says. "Um… I don't know how to explain it. It was… dark. I couldn't see anything, but… I heard this voice. And it was calling me. And… I… I knew. Dunno how to describe it, I just… knew." She falls silent, looking down at her lap.

"Knew what, sweetheart?" Jackie presses after the silence becomes too long.

"Where I need to go," Rose says. "Well, not where, exactly, but… which way. It's like the dream was guiding me, showing me the way."

"The way to what?"

"I dunno exactly," she replies honestly. "Not sure what I'm gonna find. But the Doctor, he's calling me. And I'm sure as hell not going to ignore him."

"Are you sure it's him?" Jackie asks urgently. "I mean, this isn't just another one of your hallu-"

"They're not hallucinations, Mum," Rose sighs. "They're just… make-believe. And yes, I'm sure. This is real, Mum. It's him. He's calling me."

There's a long pause in which nobody speaks, and the only sound to be heard is the crackling of the fire. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, Mickey says, "I believe her."

She shoots him a look that says thank you more intensely and truly than words ever could, and he simply nods in reply.

"But how can you be so sure?" Jackie asks, and Rose isn't sure if she's addressing her or Mickey.

But it's Mickey who answers. "Because I've met the Doctor," he says strongly. "You have, too. You know what he's like. You know how much he lo-" He drops off in mid-word, but picks up again just a second later. "I think Rose knows a message from him when she gets one."

There's another pause, until at last, Jackie whispers, "Alright, then."

All eyes turn to Pete, and after a moment, he nods. "Okay."

So they all pack their bags and get ready to leave. And that night, they load their stuff into Pete's old Jeep and they drive away.

They drive and drive and drive. They stay the night in whatever hotels they can find and they spend their days on the road. Across the water, hundreds and hundreds of miles. They just keep driving and driving and driving. And every night she has the dream again, and every night, his voice is closer. She sits in the passenger seat every day, gives whoever's driving directions, tells them which way to go. None of them know where they're going. None of them know what they're going to find. But they've got faith in her, and in the dream, and in the Doctor.

So they drive.

The hours in the car turn into days, and the days turn into weeks. They probably aren't taking the fastest route – it would help if they knew their destination, but all they've got to go on is a voice in a dream and the word of a traumatized twenty-one-year-old girl. They've all got their doubts, even her. Perhaps no one more than her. But they keep going, clinging to the tiny hope that maybe there is some truth in this. Maybe they will find something.

And that tiny bit of hope is enough to pull Rose Tyler to the end of the universe.

But in reality, it's not the end of the universe where they end up.

It's a beach in Norway. A beach called Dålig-Ulv Stranden, the translation of which both amuses and pains her. But maybe it's a good sign. Maybe it means she's in the right place.

They drive right out onto the sand and get out. Mickey, Jackie, and Pete stay at the car, lined up against it, but she ventures out, wandering away from them, searching the space for any sign of him. Any sign of anything.

It takes a while before she sees anything. But it's worth it. Because there she is, standing on the wet sand, the salty, bitter air whipping her hair into her face. And then she turns her head, and there he is. Exactly as she remembers him.

God, she can _see _him.

He's pale and transparent, like some sort of illusion, but it's better than every drawing, every dream, and every delusion put together. Because this time, it's not just an image or a voice. This time, he's real.

Still, she hangs back. Because though she won't admit it, she's terrified. Terrified that this is just her imagination again, that he's not real. So instead of rushing towards him, ecstatic, she timidly asks, "Where are you?"

"Inside the TARDIS," comes his echoing reply; his voice sounds like it's being transmitted from far away, which, she supposes, it is. "There's one tiny little gap in the universe left, just about to close. And it takes a lot of power to send this projection. I'm in orbit around a supernova." He pauses, and there's a whisper of a sad smile on his face. "I'm burning up a sun just to say goodbye."

She nearly bursts into tears at that simple declaration, but manages to hold herself together. "You look like a ghost."

"Hold on." He pulls out his screwdriver and directs it at something she can't see – the TARDIS console, she supposes. And then, after a moment, he… solidifies. He looks so real, so perfectly, beautifully real, that she could swear he's right there with her.

Now she approaches him, because perhaps she is really there. Perhaps she can fall into his arms again, just like old times. Lifting her hand, she murmurs, "Can I t–?"

"I'm still just an image," he replies sadly. "No touch."

She lowers her hand; she can hear her weak voice cracking as she asks, "Can't you come through properly?"

"The whole thing would fracture," he tells her. "Two universes would collapse."

"So?" At that single word, that familiar, caring smile grows on his face, and she inhales sharply. She knows he's not there, but he's just so… real. So him. She looks away, and out of the corner of her eye she sees the smile disappear, but the creases around his eyes remain. She looks up at him for a second, and then away again.

"Where are we?" he asks, frowning at their surroundings. "Where did the gap come out?"

"We're in Norway," she replies.

"Norway," he echoes, nodding. "Right."

"About fifty miles out of Bergen," she elaborates. "It's called…" She pauses, remembers the name, tries to get the pronunciation right. "…Dålig-Ulv Stranden."

"Dalek?" he asks, instantly on the alert.

"Dålig," she corrects. "It's Norwegian for bad." Looking around, she allows herself a tiny smile as she says, "This translates to Bad Wolf Bay."

Looking back at him, she sees that he's smiling, but it's the same sort of smile as hers – the kind that does a shoddy job of concealing the misery and agony behind it. In an instant, her smile has vanished, and when she asks, "How long have you got?" Her voice rings with the tears she's holding back.

"About two minutes."

She nods, pushing her hair back from her face, and she's edging dangerously close to hysterical as she says, "I don't even know what to say!"

The ghost of a laugh hides in his grin, his huffed exhalation, the way he ducks his head briefly and then looks back at her. "You've still got Mister Mickey, then," he observes, looking over at the trio by the car.

"There's five of us now," Rose tells him. "Mum, Dad, Mickey… and the baby."

"You're not…" he begins, and that quality in his voice – awe? Disbelief? – almost makes her want to laugh. Of course she's not. Whose would it be? Who could possibly replace him?

"No," she says with a little laugh, shaking her head. "It's Mum. Three months gone, more Tylers on the way."

"And what about you?" he asks

"Yeah, I'm – I'm back working in the shop," she answers.

"Oh, good for you."

"Shut up," she tells him. "No, I'm not… the Torchwood on this planet's open for business. Think I know a thing or two about aliens."

"Rose Tyler," he says, with a bright smile and that pride in his voice that he seems to reserve just for her. "Defender of the Earth."

They're silent for a second, and then he says, "You're dead. Officially, back home. So many people died that day, and you'd gone missing… You're on the list of the dead."

She ducks her head, her breaths becoming uneven as she tries to hold back tears, covering her mouth with her hand.

"But here you are," he continues. "Living a life, day after day. The one adventure I can never have."

Now she can barely hold back her sobs; when she speaks, they're there, clear in her choked voice. "Am I ever gonna see you again?"

"You can't," he replies softly.

"What're you gonna do?" she asks him, struggling to keep her hair away from her face, because she doesn't want to lose sight of him, not for a second.

"Oh, I've got the TARDIS," he says. "Same old life, last of the Time Lords."

"Oh your own?" she asks, and he replies with a simple nod. She thinks back to the letters she's written him, wishes she had the time to run back to the car and get them (she packed them just in case), wishes he could actually take them from her. She thinks of what she wrote, telling him to find someone else… she stands by it. She can't bear the thought of him all alone.

And she thinks of some of the confessions she's made in her letters – specifically one that she's never put in such simple terms, even though it's the most important one of all.

This is the last chance she'll ever get to tell him.

She sucks in a deep breath, and begins, "I –" but her sobs cut her off and she can't finish it. She pauses for a moment, takes a few more breaths, and finally, she manages to choke out, "I love you."

It's got none of the power or certainty behind it that she'd hoped it would; on the contrary, it echoes with her pain and her tears, turning what should be a beautiful, brilliant truth into something purely tragic.

"Quite right, too," he agrees softly, and she nods.

"And I suppose," he continues, "if it's my last chance to say it…"

She watches him intently, not even daring to hope.

"Rose Tyler," he begins, but he never finishes, because it's in that moment that the divide between the universes rips them apart, and he fades into nothing.

He's gone.

Always and forever gone. She truly will never see him again, never hear his voice or his laugh, never see his smile, never know what the end of that sentence was meant to be.

And she's never felt so very alone.

Now she lets the tears fall, lets the heartbroken sobs escape her lips as she buries her face in her hands. And she stands there, alone on the beach that she herself named, lost to him forever.

She's been emptied out completely and left hollow, and now the nothingness inside her is threatening to consume her completely. She's breaking under the burden of love gone wrong, falling apart as a result of losing the man who was, to her, the most important thing in two universes.

The movies get it wrong. Those stupid romance flicks can't possibly hope to come close to conveying the true anguish felt by the victim of a tragic love story.

She half expects herself to crumple to the ground, devoid of the willpower to keep herself standing. But she doesn't. She's frozen like a statue, and she can't move at all, excepting the shaking of her body as the heaving sobs work their way out of her system. Or not. She doesn't think she'll ever be done crying over this.

At some point, her mother's arms are around her, guiding her, helping her back across the sand to the Jeep. She leads her back to the car, and Mickey helps into the back seat with him and holds her close, brushing her hair out of her face and rocking her slowly back and forth, like he would when they were kids and she was sad. Once her loud sobs retreat into silent tears, Jackie's voice from the passenger seat fills the car, asking all the natural questions: where was he, what did he say, when would he be coming back. She doesn't answer a single one of them, just sits there in silence, tears rolling down her cheeks and dripping into her lap.

Mickey knows her well enough that he can answer the last one for her. "Never," he says softly. "He's not coming back."

And once he's said it, it's true. It's concrete. It's fact. And she has to bury her face in his shirt and hold tight to him, clinging to the firm, constant, reliable stability that is Mickey, because she thinks if she loses hold she'll fall into nothingness.

Because never.

Because he's not coming back.

-0-0-0-

**Well, this chapter turned into something of a monster. Wow. Anyways, if you scroll down, you'll see a little blue button that says 'Post Review'. It wants to be clicked. It would be rude to keep it waiting.**

**-Caskett54**


	7. Chapter 7

_Doctor,_

_Working for Torchwood is, in a word, strange. Yeah, Mickey and I made it onto the team in Cardiff. We've all got roles of a sort. I'm sort of the expert on aliens; whenever they've got a question about a new race, they look to me, which is a little weird. Feels almost like they expect me to be like you – know everything about alien species and all – and I'm not. Still, they haven't gotten rid of me yet, so I must be good for something. Owen's a doctor, so whenever somebody gets hurt, that's his responsibility. He does autopsies too, and he's not bad in the field. Ianto… I don't think anybody really appreciates him much. He orders pizza, brings us coffee, and gets us everywhere on time. Sometimes I think he's hiding something, something sad that he doesn't want us to find out about. Something sad to do with the person he loves. I recognize that look he gets on his face sometimes, Doctor. I see it staring back at me in the mirror every night._

_Tosh does everything technical and scientific, but lately Mickey's been helping her on the technical front. He's still sort of the tin dog – you remember that? Aliens in the school, K-9 and Sarah-Jane, and you were a crazy physics teacher? Anyways, Tosh can do field work, too, but mostly she stays in the base and backs us up. Us is me, Owen, Mickey, and Suzie, if you didn't get that. Suzie's still in charge, and I'm still not sure I trust her. See, there's this glove device that I've never seen them use. They just keep it on this shelf, and sometimes I catch Suzie staring at it. Just staring. I don't know. If you were here, you'd probably tell me to trust me instincts, go with my gut. But I don't know, because you're not here._

_You really should be here._

_There were Slitheen in Downing Street yesterday. It was pretty bizarre, like some tripped-out case of déjà vu. Met an alternate Harriet Jones and got stuck hiding from the Slitheen with her, only instead of you, Owen was there with us, and let me tell you, he was a lot less pleasant and a lot less clever. In fact, he wasn't much help at all. He's a good agent, but when things get really bad and he can't see anything helpful to do, most of what he does is complain, which doesn't help at all. Really, I think we only got out of there for two reasons – because I had some idea of what the Slitheen would do, and because Suzie and Mickey came in to help us. And then Tosh bombed the place, just like Mickey did last time, because he and I told her what to do._

_It really was the weirdest thing. I kept turning around and expecting to see you, the old you, with your leather jacket and your big nose and those ears. I kept waiting for you to rush out and declare in that Northern accent of yours that there were aliens in Downing Street. But of course you didn't. Because there is no Doctor in this universe._

_It's funny. Of all the parallel worlds to get trapped it, I had to choose the one without a Doctor. It's either tragic, ironic, or poetic. I'm not sure which. Maybe all three._

_There's another race that we deal with a lot. I don't know if you've heard of them – we call them Weevils because we're not sure what their real name is. They don't exactly talk, and not even Tosh can translate the sort of growl-like noises that they make. They've got these big block-like heads with these deformed, beast-like faces, and they normally wear suits. Kind of like you, Doctor. Aliens in suits. Only they're much more evil and much less clever. And much worse-looking._

_Here's one that I do know the name of – have you ever heard of the Silurians? Tosh calls them 'Homo Reptilius'. She says it's because that's their scientific name; Owen says it's because she thinks it makes her sound clever. She is clever, though. Extremely clever. Not as clever as you, of course, but you know what I mean. Clever for a human. Anyways, they're these sort of green lizard-men who live underground, and guess what? They're not from another planet! They live here, in caves under the earth, whole cities of them, just living down there without anyone noticing! It's incredible, really, and it's beautiful. The Silurians themselves are pretty brilliant, too – in general, they're peaceful people. They're sort of like humans, only… Zen. Most of them, anyway. Occasionally, one of them gets a bit out of hand and decides that the Silurians should have this planet all to themselves, and that's when we step in. Still, they're probably my favorite alien race that we deal with. _

_Alright, I think I've avoided the real topic at hand for long enough, don't you?_

_I can only talk about work for so long. Eventually, I have to get to what's really important._

_Us._

_What I said to you on that beach in Norway – I meant it, Doctor. Every word. I didn't just say it because I knew it would be the last time I ever saw you and I needed to say something. I really and truly meant it._

_I love you._

_I don't know how you were going to end that sentence before you faded away, but I have to hope that you were going to say you loved me, too._

_The misery of watching you disappear on that beach… it was just as bad as losing you the first time around, maybe worse. I didn't want to leave that spot. I thought maybe, by some twist of fate, you'd be able to come back to me. So I just stood there and cried until Mum came and took me back to the car. You'd thank her for that if you were here, because if she hadn't, I'd probably still be waiting._

_Mum thinks I should move on – find a nice bloke, get a job that doesn't involve aliens. She hasn't said so, not since Bad Wolf Bay, but I can tell she's thinking it. But I don't think I ever will. You're a tough act to follow, Doctor. Sarah Jane said so, and she was right. But she had to get on with her life, just like I have to get on with my life. Though I suspect I won't do as well as her. I'm stuck in this world of the extraterrestrial and I don't think I'll ever get out. I know I'll never find someone that I can love the way I loved you. The way I still do love you. I'll never move on, Doctor. In my heart, I'll always be standing on that beach, clinging to the nonexistent hope that you'd be back for me. In spirit, if not in flesh, I'll always be there, waiting._

_I had the best luck in the world for a while there, didn't I? I met the most fantastic man in the universe, and for some reason I can't even begin to fathom, he thought I was the most fantastic woman in the universe. That doesn't happen to many people, does it? Well, maybe it does. It's a big universe. Whole bunch of people on the lookout for the love of their life. Eventually, someone's going to stumble on the perfect person._

_I'm just so glad that that someone was me._

_And that that person was you._

_That's not to say you're perfect. I know you're not. And I love you for it. I love you for all of your faults, your flaws, your shortcomings. Perhaps I even love you more because of them. They make you… I don't know. More human. More Time Lord? I don't know. How would your race word that?_

_It makes you more alive._

_Nine hundred and… how many is it now? Three? Five? Seven? I can't keep track – time travel really does muddle things up in your head. All the same, that's an awfully long time to live, Doctor. Don't you ever get tired of it? Don't you ever wonder if maybe there's something better waiting for you once you stop all this regenerating? Don't you ever think that maybe nine hundred years is enough?_

_Stop thinking that, if you are. Stop it right now. Forever isn't nearly long enough for you, my Doctor. You've got to save the human race a whole load more times before we're going to just let you go. You've got responsibilities, mister. You've got people relying on you. And when we manage find a way back to get me back to you, I want you to be alive and waiting when I get there._

_Yeah, I said that. Don't even try to stop me, Doctor. They don't know it yet, but Torchwood's going to help me to create new versions of those reality-hopping devices. Versions that won't just transport us through holes in the fabric of reality – they'll punch the holes themselves. Collapsing universes be damned, I will not be separated from you. And I think I've just realized that now as I write this letter to you. I'm Rose Tyler, aren't I? I'm the girl who, when you saved her life and sent her back to her family, absorbed the entirety of the time vortex and became a god just to get back to you. I'm the girl who was willing to leave her family, her entire life, behind just to stay with you. I think that, until now, I forgot that. I forgot who I was._

_But I remember now._

_I'm Rose Tyler. I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself._

_And if anyone thinks I'm just going to forget about you, they're sadly mistaken._

_Because I'm Rose Tyler. And I don't give up, do I? Not ever. I fight. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to fight to get back to you, just like I've always fought to get back to you. Just like I'll always fight to get back to you._

_Because I made my choice a long time ago. And I am never going to leave you._

_Because I love you._

_Goodbye for now, my Doctor, my love. It won't be long until I see you again._

_I love you._

_All of my love,_

_Rose_

-0-0-0-

The next day, she makes sure she's the last to leave the base. And then, once everyone's left, she goes back into the archives and starts sorting around through various alien artifacts and pieces of advanced technology. Some of them have labels stating their origin and purpose; many that don't have post-it notes stuck to them with comments scribbled in Tosh's elegant cursive handwriting. And there are so many items that a part of her thinks she'll never be able to find the one she's looking for. But after almost two hours of searching, just as she's about to give up and head home, a word catches her attention.

_DIMENSION._

You know when you see a word but you've got no idea where you saw it, and you have to go through the entirety of your surroundings until you find the word again? That's how she feels now, but she's determined again. She's motivated. And it only takes her around fifteen minutes to locate the label she saw, and it's just what she's looking for.

_DIMENSION HOPPING DEVICE._

She pulls out the box and reaches inside; her fingers close around a familiar shape, and she withdraws her hand to be confronted with a familiar, unfriendly sight. The dimension hopping device. That damned yellow disc. She hates it, hates it, hates it, but right now, she could kiss it. Because it's just what she needs.

She loops the chain around her neck and presses down on the yellow button, but nothing happens. She wasn't expecting anything to happen. But she had to be sure.

She knows she can't hope to understand the technology, so she just slips the device into her purse and buries it deep underneath the rest of her stuff. She'll figure something out soon – maybe she'll convince Mickey to help her, or better yet, Tosh – but for now, she's just going to head home. She's late enough as it is.

But when she heads up to the office, someone's waiting there for her.

"Thought I might find you here," Mickey says.

"Hello to you, too," she replies. "Something wrong?"

"You didn't come home," he tells her. "Your mum got worried and called me. Said you weren't answering your phone."

"Yeah, uh – I – it's dead," she invents wildly.

"Yeah," he agrees sarcastically. "Rose, what're you doing here?"

"Following up on some stuff," she replies vaguely. "I'm behind on my mission reports, Suzie's been bugging me –"

"You're not behind on your mission reports," he says. "You're always caught up. You never did your homework back in school, but you always write your mission reports."

"I –"

"Rose." He holds out his hand. "Give it here."

Sighing, she opens her bag, plunges her hand inside, and withdraws the dimension hopping device, dropping it into his hand. "What now?" she asks. "Are you going to report me to Suzie? She won't let me go, she needs me –"

"Rose," he sighs, feeling the familiar shape and weight of the device, turning it over in his hands. "You can't do this –"

"The hell I can't, Mickey. Screw the fabric of reality – I'm going to get back home, to him, and if the walls between universes can't stop me, neither can you –"

"– alone," he finishes.

"What?" She's puzzled.

He shakes his head, sighing. "That's your problem, Rose. Since we got here, it's like you think it's you against the world. You've got to do everything for yourself, and nobody can do anything to help you. You're on your own. But you're not. Rose, you're surrounded by people who care about you, people who can get you where you need to be. Please. Let someone help you for a change."

Her eyes are wide as she watches him; this was not where she'd expected this conversation to go. "Help," she echoes.

"Yes."

"You – you want to help me get back to him?"

"Yes."

"Even though I – he –"

"Well, it's like you said last time, isn't it?" he says. "There's nothing left for you here."

"That wasn't true," she murmurs. "It's just that there's so much more for me there."

"I know," he agrees. "We all know. Me, Tosh, Suzie, Ianto, hell, even Owen. We're going to help you. You got that?"

She nods weakly, and when he opens his arms to her, she folds herself weakly inside of them. Accepting, for the first time since she was torn away from him, the help and love of someone else.

-0-0-0-

**I'm in a giving mood and I have a lot of chapters written. So, voila! A new chapter, way ahead of time! Enjoy!**

**Reviews are like travelling with the Doctor. Okay, maybe not quite that good, but still. It doesn't take long to type one up and they make writers want to write! The more reviews you all leave, the faster the chapters come. It's basic arithmetic. Do the calculations.**

**-Caskett54**


	8. Chapter 8

_Doctor,_

_Owen thinks I'm a nutter._

_Honestly, I'm not surprised. He's always thought that I'm something of a nutter, never really liked me all that much. He doesn't seem to like anyone than much, though I sometimes catch Tosh watching him longingly and looking away quickly before he can notice. Still, I've never taken his insults seriously, never let him get to me. Until now._

_Because now he's doing what I expected everyone to do. And it's the one thing he can do to really, truly hurt me._

_He's refusing to help._

_More than that, he's criticizing, making fun, putting me down because for the first time in months I've got a tiny spark of hope. Owen doesn't like hope. He doesn't like abstract ideas in general. He likes concrete, irrefutable fact, things that he can prove. He doesn't like concepts with meanings and purposes that vary and change endlessly. But hope seems to bother him more than most things. _

_He thinks I'm mad for holding on to that tiny flicker of light, that nearly nonexistent possibility that someday I could get back home. Back to you. He thinks I should give it up. And he tells me so very simply, very insensitively. He tells me to let it go, Blondie. Get a life. Because I'm an idiot if I think I'm ever going to get back. It's impossible. Simple as that._

_It's not the worst thing he's ever said to me._

_But it hurts the most._

_The support of the rest of the team makes Owen's refusal more bearable. Mickey, of course, is on my side from the get-go. I should've known he would be. He always is, isn't he? Always has been. That's what makes him so brilliant, so good for me. I could've been happy with him, I guess, if she was just a little different. If I wasn't Rose Tyler, the stubborn, Rose Tyler, the outgoing, Rose Tyler, the girl imbued with permanent wanderlust. I could've been happy with Mickey, but of course, I wanted more. I always seems to want more._

_Ianto seems to recognize my anguish just as I've recognized his – someday, I'll find out what's gone so wrong in his life that it could cause that sort of intense, never-ending ache. I won't just go up to him and ask, though. I know that pain, and I know better than to bring it to the forefront of his mind so offhandedly, so casually. That would just be so… Owen of me. I know better. No, I'll wait. I'll wait for him to tell me. Maybe I'll ask if he wants to talk about it. I know that sometimes, talking helps. Not always, but sometimes. At any rate, he can't do much to help us with finding a way back to my universe, but he does everything he possibly can to help me. When, in my haste, I leave papers lying around, he clears them up for me and stacks them in order. Whenever I look tired, I soon find a cup of his specialty industrial strength coffee sitting in front of me, plus a bear claw. I'm honestly not sure how Ianto knows about me and bear claws – I used to have a rather unhealthy obsession with them in school before I dropped out – but I haven't had them in years, and I never told any of the Torchwood team about my old bear claw addiction. Maybe Mickey told him. He was something of a primary supplier for me back in the day._

_Suzie doesn't seem to care about the project. No, that makes her seem cruel and insensitive. She just isn't emotionally invested in it at all. But she recognizes my desire to return home. And though she hates to lose a good agent, she understands. So she approves the project, lets us work on the dimension hopping devices so long as it doesn't interfere with the work they're actually paying to do. She's sort of neutral – she doesn't help us, but she doesn't hinder us – like Owen does – either._

_But Tosh… Tosh is the one whose overwhelming support surprises me. Suzie isn't really the most social person – really, she's kind of an ice queen – so as the only other two girls on the team, Tosh and I have always had a sort of a bond. One might call it friendship, but it isn't really that. It's more of… an alliance. Mutual need. We're coworkers taken one step further – we're comrades. We support each other, stand up for each other, watch the other's back. But until now, I haven't considered her a friend exactly. She's not someone I would call up to sob about my personal life, not someone I would invite over for a drink and some chit-chat between girls. But that's changed now, because Tosh isn't acting like a comrade – she's acting like a friend. She's being a friend. She's devoting every spare second she has to taking apart the dimension hopping devices, trying to upgrade them (which is really brilliant, because out of the entire team, she's definitely the best one for the job). She's murmuring reassurances to me, coming over and standing behind me and rubbing circles on my back with her palm when I look particularly miserable. _

_In short, Tosh is… brilliant. She's absolutely, unbelievably, surprisingly brilliant. Yeah, she is the uptight one of the team, the one with a 'stick up her ass', as Owen likes to say. She's the one who says what she feels almost as little as I do. But somehow, in what is perhaps the most trying time of my life, Toshiko Sato has come through. She's a rock, a constant, something to hold on to. _

_I've somehow always found myself alone in the alternate universe, no matter how many people who I care for are near me, simply because they all feel so… insubstantial. It's hard to explain. I just can't get close to them because they're so thin and papery and unreliable and it seems like they'll be there one second and gone the next. You were such a constant, such a fixed point, and despite your regeneration, you never, ever changed. You were always there for me, no matter what, and that stayed the same. You were an anchor, the thing that kept me grounded. And I can't find someone here who can do that for me. I still find myself partially blaming Pete for getting me stranded here: Mum is too fixated on getting me to adjust to a normal life again and, though she won't admit it, she doesn't fully support my attempts to return home; and Mickey, despite being a wonderfully grounded person, doesn't work because I still feel rather guilty around him. Suzie is frozen; Ianto is a closed-off enigma of a man; Owen is a cruel jokester; and Tosh is quiet and impersonal. Until now. Now she's opening up, and somehow she's become the person who best keeps me grounded in reality._

_Funny how that works._

_I met this woman yesterday, by the way. Gwen was her name. Last name was something starting with a C. Carter, maybe. I don't really remember. But the funny thing is, she looked exactly like that girl Gwyneth, the one who gave her life to close the space-time rift in Cardiff. You remember? That was one of our first adventures, the first time while traveling with you that I really and truly thought I was going to die. _

_Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm remembering. Yes, I was terrified, but you know what I was thinking? I was thinking, __**this isn't so bad. **__I mean, yeah, I didn't want to die. But as dying goes, really, not all that awful. I mean, if you're going to go, you might as well make it memorable, and it's hard to get more memorable than 'murdered by ghosts in 1869' (that's what I thought then, anyway – I've since learned that there are, in fact, quite a few much more memorable ways to die). But honestly. Even then, I guess I knew that dying next to you was definitely not the worst thing that could happen._

_Anyway, here's the story. We didn't make any progress with the dimension hopping devices, so Tosh decided that I needed a drink. Well, we all needed a drink at that point (even Suzie, who seems very stressed about… something). But me especially, for obvious reasons. So Tosh offered to buy me a drink, and I thought, what the hell. Owen tagged along, mostly just because he wanted a drink, but Tosh didn't pay for his._

_So Tosh and I were sitting at the bar, and Owen was off doing his own thing, and all of a sudden this woman sat down beside me. She had choppy layered dark brown hair, and when she ordered a drink, I thought something about her accent – she was Welsh – sounded familiar. But then she turned and looked at me and made some comment about a bad day at work, and I recognized her._

_Because I swear, she looked exactly like Gwyneth. Down to the slightest detail. They could've been twins. And we got to talking a little, and she introduced herself as Gwen, which just made things even odder. Oh, yeah, that's right – Cooper. Gwen Cooper. Anyway, I thought maybe something strange had happened, and in this reality, when Gwyneth closed the rift, she was transported through time to present-day Cardiff or something like that. But no – just an ordinary woman with an ordinary life. But it was interesting. Kind of painful, being reminded of those days, but kind of happy, too. I think that maybe I'm getting to the point where I can look back on those good times we have and I won't fall apart because I miss you so much. You've heard the phrase – don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. It's such an oversimplification, and clearly whoever came up with it never lost something that they really, truly loved. But I think that maybe I'm almost there. Maybe I can look back on laughing with you and hugging you and holding your hand and I won't cry because it's over. I'll smile because it's happened._

_But obviously I'm not there yet, seeing as I'm starting to cry now. Dammit._

_Oh, I have to go – I've been writing this instead of working, and now Tosh is calling me. I'll write again soon, of course. I'll have to – I'll probably break down completely if I don't._

_Hopefully, I'll see you soon._

_All of my love,_

_Rose_

-0-0-0-

"What is it, Tosh?" Rose carefully folds up the letter she's written and tucks the sheets of lined paper into her bag.

"It's this thing," Tosh declares, obviously annoyed, as she strides out of her lab towards Rose and drops the prototype (though perhaps it's not even far enough along to be called that) of the dimension cannon onto her desk. It's a flat circuit board the size of an eight-by-eleven sheet of paper, completely covered in a mess of wires and cables and mismatched alien tech. In short, it's chaos. "I'm trying everything – technology adapted from the rift machine, teleports, even bits of a faulty vortex manipulator. Nothing's working."

"So what are you saying?" Rose demands. "It's never going to work?"

"What I'm saying," Tosh replies, "is that Mickey and I aren't enough. He's clever, but he's only got a basic understanding of the technology we're working with, and I know I can't do this on my own. We need help."

Rose frowns. "Explain."

Tosh takes a deep breath. "We haven't got the resources or the personnel to make this work. But there's someone that has."

"Who?" Rose asks, though she's pretty sure she already knows the answer.

"Torchwood One," Tosh replies after a moment's hesitation. "We need to bring this to Torchwood One."

Torchwood One. _If it's alien, it's ours. _Big T logo displayed across a glass window. People typing at computers wearing two flashing earpieces. White wall glowing bright as indistinct gray figures march through, solidifying into Cybermen. Rose squeezes her eyes shut, trying to ward off the flood of images that rush her when she hears those words, _Torchwood One, _but blocking out the real world only makes the world of her memories even stronger. His hands gently hanging a dimension hopper around her neck. The intensity and something close to anger and something else she can't describe on his face when he says, _"You'll never be able to see her again, your own mother!" _The way his expression softens when she replies, _"I made my choice a long time ago, and I am never gonna leave you." _Daleks crashing through the windows, hurtling towards the Void. The lever slipping out of place. Reaching, reaching, reaching… throwing herself at the lever and grabbing onto it, holding it in place. The anguish on his face as he watches – he always did hate being helpless, more than anything. Clinging to the lever as the gravity of the Void lifts her off the ground. Her name screamed in his voice as he throws a hand out to her, but he can't come close to reaching her. Her fingers slipping… dropping towards the void… caught by her father… one last look at him, panic and frantic despair etched into his features. The last time she ever saw him in the flesh.

"Rose?" At Tosh's slightly worried tone, Rose blinks, shaking her head as though she can shake off the images. She can't. They plague her endlessly: haunt her in her waking hours, lurk in the shadows of her sleep. She can't escape them. She can never escape them.

A part of her doesn't even want to.

They are a part of her, as much a part of her as her own hand. As much a part of her as him. They are misery and desolation incarnate, but they are her motivation. They are what drives her. Some people are kept going by the promise of happiness. Rose Tyler is propelled forward by the reality of pain.

Torchwood could wipe those memories from her mind, she knows. One dose of ret-con, just a single amnesia pill taken with a glass of wine late one evening, and she'd be so free, so unburdened. She could forget the pain. Or she could forget him entirely. And she'd be lying if she said she'd never considered the option.

But she's never seriously considered it. Not once. It was a better life, life with the Doctor. Those years were the best of her life, and she wouldn't have missed them for the world. Forgetting them would make things simpler, would make carrying on so much easier, but it would be wrong, so wrong. Because she wouldn't be herself anymore, not without her Doctor. She wouldn't be his Rose. And more than anything, she wants to be his Rose.

She could never bring herself to forget the Doctor. Not then, not now, not ever.

"I'm fine," she tells Tosh. "Just – sorry. Never mind. I'm fine. You were saying?"

"Torchwood One," Tosh says.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Those words, those images, those memories. Damn them all.

"No," she says firmly.

"Rose –"

"No," she repeats. "No. Not them. Not Canary Wharf. I – I can't, Tosh." The moment she stops and struggles with the last sentence, her tone is transformed, from strong and determined to broken and emotional. "Not them. Not there. I can't."

Tosh knows exactly why Rose can't bear the thought of Torchwood One. Between the occasional brief, impersonal explanation, short, uncommon heart-to-heart talks, and much more frequent wine-induced ramblings, she has gotten the whole story of how Rose Tyler came to live in this universe. Every little detail, or at least most of them. She knows the part Torchwood One played in stranding Rose here. She knows of the misery and tragedy Rose endured at their hands.

"I'm sorry," she says. "But we've got to. You don't have to come – I'll understand completely if you don't want to. But we need their help. We can't do this without them."

Rose takes a deep, shaky breath, and chokes out, "Fine."

"You're sure?"

"Yes," she says, her voice regaining its familiar strength. "If that's what it takes to get these damn things working, then yes. Torchwood One."

"Alright. You don't have to –"

"Oh, don't start, Tosh." Okay, maybe it's a little unfair to take all this out on poor, blameless Toshiko, but she can't help it. "You're not leaving me behind. Leaving me behind never ends well." She sucks in another deep breath and lets it out slowly, the air hissing softly between her teeth. "Take me to Torchwood One.


	9. Chapter 9

Torchwood Tower looks exactly the same.

Big looming building in the middle of London, known to the general population as Canary Wharf. She remembers when she first came through to this universe, it was out of use, dark and cluttered and abandoned. Since she got here, they've risen right back up to their old position as lord and master over the Torchwood Institute.

Torchwood One. Just her luck.

Rose, Tosh, and Mickey push through the front door into the perfectly normal-looking lobby and stride confidently up to the front desk, where a small, unassuming woman with stick-straight light blonde hair in a low ponytail, wearing a blue blazer and matching pencil skirt, is typing at a computer. When she notices them, she looks up and smiles politely, sweeping a rogue strand of hair behind her ear. "Can I help you?" she asks pleasantly, a Welsh lilt in her sweet voice.

"Rose Tyler," Rose says curtly. "Torchwood Three, Cardiff branch. Operative number 52749. Toshiko Sato." She jerks her head towards Tosh, who stoands to her right and a few steps back. "Mickey Smith." She nods to Mickey, who flanks her on her left. "We're expected."

Rose is sure the woman has been trained to deny the very existence of Torchwood to most anyone who comes looking, but when Rose mentions her Torchwood ID, her expression goes from that of a woman preparing to lie to a combination of relief, suspicion, and the fear of being wrong. At the words 'we're expected', she focuses on her computer monitor, clicks on a few different things Rose can't see, and scrolls down a bit. "Tyler, Sato, and Smith of Torchwood Three," she reads off the screen. "Of course. Hang on a second." She reaches for a small speaker built into her desk and presses a little red button on the side of it; the button lights up. "Ma'am?"

There's a second's silence, and then a woman's voice replies, tinny and distorted by the speaker. "Go ahead, Parson."

"Torchwood Three has arrived," the woman – Parson, probably her last name – says. "Shall I send them up?"

"Hold on," the woman instructs. "I'm sending Jones down to collect them." There's a soft click, and the red light in the button turns off; with a pleasant smile, Parson turns and looks up at him. "Wait here for just a moment," she says. "Miss Jones will be with you presently." Then she goes back to what she was doing on her computer.

So they wait.

Tosh stands calmly, holding her precious laptop bag against her side, glancing around the room as though she finds it mildly interesting, but nothing extraordinary. Mickey paces; he was there at Canary Wharf in the alternate universe, too, and surely being here must bring back memories, but certainly not unbearably painful memories, like the ones Rose is trying to fend off. But yes, memories which are absolutely enough to make him angry, so he paces back and forth, concealing the rage brewing beneath the surface.

Tosh stands. Mickey paces.

And Rose isn't there.

She's vacant. Empty. Like someone's reached deep down inside her and scooped everything out. She's just a shell, hollow and hopeless. A broken-down car on the side of the road. Nowhere near where she physically is. She's trapped in the past, trapped in bad memories and his face. Hopelessly entangled in the strands of what already was. Because once you've traveled time, it's the linear progression of past to present to future which seems scrambled, and the frantic, out-of-order hopping from one moment to another which feels reliable, safe, and straight.

"_Welcome to Torchwood!"_

"_If it's alien, it's ours."_

"_They're Cybermen. The ghosts are all Cybermen."_

"_Back to Pete's world. Hey, we should call it that! Pete's World."_

"_That's not going to happen."_

"_You're not doing that to me again."_

"_You'll never be able to see her again, your own mother!"_

When she reaches this point in the flashes of her disjointed memories, distorted by pain and longing, she silently mouths the words along with her past self.

"_I made my choice a long time ago, and I am never gonna leave you."_

How stupid she seems now. How childish, how naïve. How foolishly, idiotically, moronically, innocently, blissfully, beautifully ignorant.

She thought she knew pain back then. She thought she knew tears and the lump in her throat. She thought she knew misery and agony and longing for lost love.

She was wrong.

She knows now. She knows the exact frequency at which desolation rings in her ears. She's memorized the precise cadence and tone of her voice when she's forcing words out past a lump in her throat. She knows the sting of loss, far more painful than any silly, insignificant injury on the physical level. She knows the coolness caused by tear streaks on her face so very well that they seem to always be there, omnipresent, even when her cheeks are dry. Constant reminders of what she's missing.

She knows these things all too well.

And, unashamedly, unabashedly, she longs for ignorance.

"Torchwood Three?" a pleasant and surprisingly familiar voice inquires hesitantly, and Rose pulls herself back into the present, back into the realm of the corporeal, to see a young woman standing across the room as the elevator doors slide closed behind her. Her hair, so dark brown it's almost black, is pulled back in a neat, flawless bun at the nape of her neck. She wears a gray wool pencil skirt and a blazer of the same material, buttoned up over a crisp pale pink dress shirt. Her skin is soft coffee brown, and her sweet, pretty face, decorated by a questioning expression, is hauntingly familiar. There can be no question: Rose Tyler has seen her somewhere before.

"That's us," Tosh says when Rose doesn't reply. "Toshiko Sato, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith." She points to herself, Rose, and Mickey in turn.

The woman nods. "Adeola Oshodi. Follow me, please." She turns on her black flat-clad heel and strides back towards the lift, holding the doors open until all three have followed her inside. It's a rather large elevator, large enough for Rose to pull Adeola aside and ask softly, "I'm sorry, have I met you someplace before?"

To her surprise, Adeola just laughs. "You'd be surprised how often I get that," she tells Rose. "No, you haven't. You've probably met my cousin, though. Martha. Martha Jones. We're practically identical. A little weird, really, but you know." She shrugs dismissively. "Genetics."

"Yeah," Rose murmurs. "Right. Martha. Yeah, that must be it." But it isn't. And she knows it isn't. Because as the lift doors slide open, revealing the damned room she remembers so well (she half expects to see levers on each side, calling out, begging to be pushed into place so the army of ghosts can invade), she figures it out. Against the backdrop of the Torchwood One office, Adeola Jones is recognizable enough for Rose to put the pieces together.

She's never met this Martha. But she has met Adeola.

Just not this Adeola.

Another Adeola. An alternate Adeola. A woman who, like this one, worked for Torchwood One. She was there in the battle, the Battle of Canary Wharf, though admittedly, she wasn't there for long. She was one of the first, perhaps the first, to discover the Cybermen lurking behind the sheets of plastic, one of the first to have her mind taken over by twin earpieces, to become a slave to men in metal cases.

And she was one of the first to die.

Fantastic. As though this place didn't bring up enough bad memories. Now a woman they hadn't saved had to appear to remind her of her failure. Of her loss. To bring her that extra guilt that she so needed right now.

And then, to make matters worse yet, that hateful woman appears.

Striding in like she owns the place – which, of course, she does. Partially, at least. Dark blue suit hugging her curves, lush blonde curls bouncing as she walks, with those same black beads on silver chains strung around her neck.

It's not the same woman. Rose knows it's not the same woman.

But oh, God, she looks like her. And Rose can't help but hate her the moment she sees her.

"Torchwood Three, then," Yvonne Hartman greets. "Haven't seen you lot around here in a long while. I thought you liked to stay separate."

"We do," Rose replies, and finds herself unable to keep the venom out of her voice.

Yvonne turns to face her, tipping her head slightly to the side. "You'll be Rose Tyler, then," she says. "Heard all about you. It's a pleasure to finally meet you." She holds out a hand.

"Trust me," Rose says, taking a step back rather than taking the woman's hand, "the pleasure's all yours. I'd rather you not touch me, thanks."

Yvonne frowns, not comprehending; Tosh, too, scrunches up her brow slightly, glancing between the two. "You've never met before, then?"

"That depends on your definition of the word 'met'," Rose replies, just as Yvonne answers, "No. I wasn't involved in Miss Tyler's selection process." She shoots a pointed look at Rose, who replies, "I know. I deliberately kept away from you."

"Sorry," Tosh says, still frowning. "Am I missing something here?"

"Quite a bit, yeah," Rose tells her.

"Rose knew Yvonne Hartman in the alternate universe," Mickey explains to Tosh. "She worked at Torchwood One there, too, and had a lot to do with the ghosts. If I had to put the blame for the Battle of Canary Wharf on one person…" He glares at Yvonne. "I'd put it on her."

"That wasn't me," Yvonne defends.

"Might as well have been," Rose spits. "You're the same woman. Same thoughts, same emotions, same decisions. Had it been you, you'd have done all the same things, with all the same results. All those people would still be dead and I'd still be trapped here." She leans towards the older woman, darkness lurking behind her youthful features. "It was you, Yvonne Hartman," she hisses. "It was all you." Then she stands up straight again and glances around. "If collaborating with Torchwood One means we've got to deal with the likes of you, we'll just turn around and walk right back out that door. Where's my dad?"

"Rose," Yvonne begins. "Your father is –"

"Busy, I know," Rose interrupts. "Don't give me that, he's always busy. You're co-directors, aren't you? Same workload, same responsibilities?" Yvonne nods mutely, and Rose continues, saying, "So you go and do whatever he's doing and send him to help us. I'm not going to work with you."

Yvonne hesitates for a moment, but ultimately, she turns and strides away, her arrogant confidence slightly diminished. Rose turns back to her team – Tosh is giving her a blank, confused look, and Mickey looks as though he wants to hug her, high-five her, or fist bump her, possibly all three. She can't help but smirk briefly in his direction.

"Rose! Mickey!"

Suddenly, a familiar Irish-accented voice calls out to her, pulling her around to face a blonde boy she recognizes instantly.

"Jake," she laughs, and runs to him, throwing herself into his arms. He seems a bit surprised and awkward at first – he was never the most hug-oriented person – but after a moment he gets over it and embraces her. She buries her face in his shoulder with a smile on her lips, like she used to do with the Doctor, breathing in his scent. His smell brings with it memories of dinner parties crashed by metal men, of two Mickeys, of their raggedy band of resisters, 'London's Most Wanted', of jumping between realities, of fighting Daleks and Cybermen, of the reasonable statement that they could always take the lift. But in a good way. A way that makes her smile nostalgically. She's always liked Jake.

"Good to see you," he says when she pulls away.

"And you!" she agrees. "How're things?"

"Pretty good, considering," he replies. "Saved the world a few times."

"Good for you," Rose congratulates. "Same here, actually."

"So I've heard. How's Cardiff branch?"

"Nicer than you'd think," she says. "You Torchwood One folks think you're so posh and so important, but I promise you, we're the better bunch. We've got a cooler base than you, too."

"Have you, now?"

"Yup," she replies, popping the 'p' on the end. "You could come work with us, you know. We're more fun to work with. Better base, nice city. Never a dull moment." She grins persuasively. "Come on."

He shakes his head. "Sorry. I'm pretty settled in here. Good life, roots in the community, if you can believe it. Got a girlfriend."

"Really? What's her name?"

"Emma," he says. "She's a sweet girl. No idea what I do, which is hard, but…" He shrugs. "We'll make it work. What about you?"

"Huh? Oh. No." Rose shakes her head. "There's no one."

"Life in general?"

"Not too bad, all things considered," she admits. "It's getting better. Well, not better, but it's getting easier."

"Your dad's been wondering why you don't come by and visit."

"Oh, you know me." Rose laughs. "Can't stand this place."

"Canary Wharf, or just… London?"

"All of it," she replies. "The whole city. It's just… too close. But not nearly close enough. Does that sound crazy?"

Jake shakes his head. "No, Rose," he says. "It doesn't. Now, I won't lie to you – I can't even begin to understand what you must be going through. But I know what you're saying."

She nods and murmurs, "Thanks."

"Hello, Rose." She turns at yet another familiar voice, and, as Jake says hello to Mickey, she sees Pete Tyler striding towards her.

"Hey, Dad," she greets. "How's life treating you?"

"Probably better than it is you, all things considers," he admits. "What're you doing here? Thought you hated this place."

"Oh, I do," she assures him. "If I had a choice, I wouldn't be here. But I don't."

He frowns. "Continue."

"There's this little project we've been working on," she explains. "Tosh and Mickey, mostly, 'cause the rest of us can't understand a bit of the science involved. But they can't do it on their own." She sucks in a deep breath. "We need help."

Both of Pete's eyebrows shoot straight up. "Torchwood Three admitting that they need help from Torchwood One," he murmurs. "No wonder you didn't want Yvonne here."

"Oh, trust me," Rose mutters. "That's why I don't want her here."

He nods in understanding. "Right. So what do you need me to do?"

"You?" She shrugs. "Nothing. Just point us in the direction of a few of your best scientists. Preferably the same ones who built the dimension hopping devices."

It takes him a moment, but after a second his eyes widen as the full meaning of what Rose calls their 'little project'. "Rose, you're not –"

"I am," she interrupts. "And don't try to stop me, I've made up my mind."

"It's dangerous," he says urgently. "He said traveling between dimensions rips a hole in space and time – do you really think he'd want –"

"Listen closely, Dad," Rose spits. "Because I'm going to says something I've never said before, something you'll probably never hear me say again." She leans towards him, something dark and bright and cold and fiery all at the same time burning behind her hazel eyes, and says, "I don't give a damn what the Doctor would want."

A pleasant smile suddenly manifests itself on her lips as she pulls away from him, straightening up. "Scientists," she orders, perfectly polite and calm. "Now, if it's not too much trouble."

Speechless, Pete gives a bemused nod and turns away from her, looking from where Mickey is talking to Jake to where Tosh stands, alone and silent, in the middle of the room. "Miss Sato, Mr. Smith," he calls out, and both look up. "If you'll follow me, please," he requests, and after casting inquiring looks at Rose, both of them obey. Tosh and Mickey follow Pete Tyler down the halls of Torchwood Tower as he leads them toward a lab, and Rose trails along a ways behind them, trapped somewhere between this dreadful place and her equally miserable thoughts.

-0-0-0-

**That's right. It's a... _celebratory update! _Happy Turkey Day, everybody!**

**Okay, important note: I'm beginning to wonder if anyone's actually reading this anymore. If you could spare the few seconds that it takes to type up a quick review - really, you don't have to spend an hour typing up an essay describing exactly what you like/don't like and why, just a quick response or a little 'hi, I'm here' is enough - that would mean a ton to me. Reviews are amazing. They're like chocolate chip cookies that just came out of the oven, so the chocolate's still all melty and yummy.**

**-Caskett54**


	10. Chapter 10

"You must be Rose Tyler." A man who can't possibly be more than twenty-five extends his hand towards her. "Heard loads about you, ma'am. Nice work with the Silurians."

"Thanks," Rose murmurs distractedly, nodding to show she's acknowledged his compliment. "But drop the 'ma'am'."

"Miss Tyler?" he tries.

"Little bit better."

"Agent Tyler?"

She laughs just a little, in spite of herself. "Just Rose is fine."

"Rose, then." He nods, holding his hand out a little further. "I'm Seth. Doctor Seth Landry."

Rose has about half an inch on Seth Landry, but it's not that he's short, so to speak. He's just small in general. Sort of skinny, and his white lab coat seems just a bit too big. He's got a head of untamable black curls, so tight that it seems that if you were to take a strand and pull it until it was straight, it would triple, maybe quadruple in length. He has pale skin with just a few freckles, a long nose, a structured jaw, and eyes that put Rose off just a bit. They're light, almost icy gray, narrow but still kind, and they almost make it seem like their owner can see right through you. Past all the layers of lies and secrets and barriers and imperfections, right to the very core of a person's being. They're eyes that see straight to the soul.

"Nice to meet you, then, Seth Landry," Rose greets, taking his hand and shaking it. She lets go after barely a second, and steps out of the way so he can see Tosh and Mickey. "Toshiko Sato, Mickey Smith. They're the ones you'll be working with most of the time, not me."

"Damn," Seth mutters, and Rose laughs lightly. He shoots her a small grin before turning to Tosh and Mickey. "Well, then. I'm Seth. Hear you lot have a bit of a project for me."

"You and your team," Tosh corrects, glancing around. "Where are they?"

"Artie's on her lunch break," Seth says. "Christian is helping out another team, and Mia…" He frowns. "Mia is… on her lunch break, too. She's off with her boyfriend somewhere. The girls will be back soon, and I'll talk to someone about getting Christian back, too."

"Alright, then." Tosh nods. "Should we wait for them to explain, or will they be long?"

"No, they should be back any second," Seth says, and right on cue, a woman breezes through the door into the lab. She's wearing a light blue pencil skirt and a dark blue button-up shirt, and a brown leather purse dangles from her shoulder; her hair is dark chestnut brown, cut in a cute, orderly little bob; her face is delicately angular, with pronounced cheekbones, a sharp jaw, thin lips, and an upturned, almost pointed nose; and her eyes are very light chocolate brown. "Hey, Seth," she greets, putting her bag down on a table near the door. "Who are your friends?"

"Torchwood Three," he says.

"Hello." Tosh smiles. "Toshiko Sato."

"Mickey Smith," Mickey puts in; the woman – Artie or Mia? – looks to Rose, who says, "Rose Tyler."

One eyebrow disappears into the woman's perfectly uniform bangs. "Pete Tyler's daughter?" Rose nods. "Well, I'm Doctor Artie Yale. Pleasure to meet you all."

"Artie isn't exactly a typical girl's name, is it?" Mickey ventures.

"Short for Artemis," she explains. "My parents were archaeologists. So, what've you got for us?"

Tosh opens her mouth to begin her explanation, but Seth cuts her off. "We're waiting on Mia. Do you know if she'll be here soon?"

Artie nods. "Yeah, I passed her on the way in. Her and that boyfriend of hers – remind me, does he know what she does?"

"Not sure."

"Either way," she continues, "it's pretty clear who wears the pants in that relationship. Don't you think?"

Before Seth has a chance to respond, the door swings open again, and in strides another woman. And Rose's first impression is that this is not someone she would ever want to get into an argument with. Something about this woman – is it the power in her stride, or maybe the headstrong smile on her face? – simply emanates confidence and a can-do attitude. This is a woman who cannot be dissuaded by anything once she's made up her mind about something.

Rose can relate to that.

She's probably in her early- to mid-twenties, and she is beautiful. Her skin is as pale and as clear as that of a porcelain doll, and her face is round and sweetly pretty. Vibrant, deep orange hair tumbles in carefree waves around her shoulders. In sharp contrast to the formal or semi-formal attire of the rest of the building, she wears slim jeans which flare at the bottom, a soft-looking purple shirt with a wide V-neck under a black leather jacket, and a short red knit scarf wrapped just once around her neck, partially concealed by her waves of smooth red hair.

She glances around the room, pale hazel eyes flicking from one person to another; all of them have their own eyes trained on her. "Um, hi," she says awkwardly, a clear Scottish accent in her voice. "Am I late or something?"

"No, you're fine," Seth says quickly. "Everyone, this is –"

"Amelia," the ginger woman interrupts. "Amelia Pond. I go by Mia."

"Amelia Pond's a fantastic name," Rose says with a frown. "Why would you shorten it?"

"Bit too fairytale," Amelia replies. "So, what're we up to?"

"Torchwood Three needs help," Seth tells her, and she raises an eyebrow. "Well, that's a first," she mutters. "So you're Torchwood Three?"

"Yeah," Rose confirms.

Amelia nods. "I've heard a bit about you all. That was you with the Silurians a while back, right?"

"Yeah."

Another nod. "Nice work. So what do you need our help with?"

Rose looks to Tosh, who steps forward, reaching into her laptop bag and producing a dimension hopping device. "I believe you all know what this is," she says, holding it out to them.

Amelia groans, rolling her eyes. "We get so much attention for that thing," she mutters. "We've worked on other projects, you know."

"I'm sure," Tosh agrees. "But this is what we need your help with." She places the dimension hopping device on the lab table.

Seth frowns, picking it up. "What do you need help with, then?" he asks, puzzled. "It's nonfunctional. The walls have closed – it doesn't work anymore." He presses the yellow button three times to demonstrate, and absolutely nothing happens.

"We know," Rose says. "We need it to work again."

Seth raises an eyebrow skeptically. "Not possible. These things take advantage of holes in the universe that already exist. They don't punch the holes themselves. And right now, there aren't any holes. This thing," he shakes it, "it can't break through on its own."

"Then build one that can," Rose instructs firmly. "Forget dimension hopper, build a dimension cannon."

"Rose, it doesn't work like that."

"Then make it work like that!" At the fierceness in her voice, Seth takes a step back; Artie jumps; and Amelia raises an eyebrow, looking surprised but a bit impressed by this small blonde girl's burning strength. Rose draws in a long, deep breath, and says, in a much softer voice, "Seth, do you know my story?"

He frowns. "I think so, yeah. Long-lost daughter of Pete Tyler and all that, right?"

"Not exactly," she admits, and steps towards him, reaching out and slipping the dimension hopper out of his hand. "This," she says, shaking it lightly, "is me. It's my past, it's my future, and it's my only way home."

His eyes widen in understanding. "You're –"

"Pete Tyler doesn't have a long-lost daughter," she continues. "There never was a Rose Tyler here. She was never born." Another deep breath. "But I'm not from around here."

"You're from an alternate universe," Seth murmurs.

"The very same one you broke into with these." She holds up the dimension hopper. "Me, my mum, and Mickey." Mickey, who's hanging back close to the door, gives a short, curt nod, silently backing Rose up. "We all got trapped here after the Battle of Canary Wharf in our universe. No way back. Except." She shakes the dimension hopper again. "Except for these."

"That's why you're so – so invested in this," he realizes. "Because if you can't get these things working, you're trapped here forever. Because –"

"Because I want to go home," Rose finishes. "That's all this is, Seth." She takes a deep, shaky breath and lets it out slowly. "I just want to go home."

Seth hesitates for a moment, and then nods. "Alright," he says quietly, and then, with more conviction, "Yeah, alright. Where do we start?"

Rose beams, and Tosh hurries over to a table, pulling out the circuit board that is all she's managed to throw together towards the goal of creating a new and improved dimension hopper. "I haven't gotten very far," she says. "Well, really, I haven't gotten anywhere at all. I've been trying to replicate the dimension hopper, and I figured that maybe I could make it more powerful using technology adapted from Torchwood Three's rift machine. I've wired in systems from some recovered alien technology, too – teleports, a nonfunctional vortex manipulator, that sort of thing – but so far, nothing."

Seth nods, and then turns to Amelia and Artie. "Mia, go and grab the research and schematics for the original dimension hopping device." As the ginger girl with the fairy-tale name turns and runs off, he continues. "Artie, see if you can't get in touch with Doctor Stewart from UNIT. I'd like her thoughts on the matter." Artie nods and hurries away, following Amelia out the glass door; the redhead turns to the right, headed for the scientific archives, and the brunette turns to the left, heading back towards the main office. Once both women's footsteps have faded, he murmurs, "Here we go, then," and turns to Rose, an eager grin on his face and a confident, determined fire in his eyes. "Let's build us a dimension cannon."

-0-0-0-

_Doctor,_

_It's happening._

_It's really happening. I guess even Torchwood One is better in this universe, because they've agreed to help us. _

_They've assigned the team who originally built the dimension hopping device to help us. They seem alright, though I've only met three of them – the fourth is busy with another project, but they're going to try to get him to help us out, too. The leader of the team is a bloke named Seth Landry – he's nice enough, I suppose. Sweet, funny. And then there's two women. The first is a brunette named Artie – Artemis, really, but she goes by Artie. She's nice, too, and really clever. She talks fast when she figures stuff out. Sort of like you, actually. The other is this woman named Amelia, and oh, I know how jealous of her you would be, because guess what, Doctor? She's ginger. You've always wanted to be ginger. She's alright, too, Amelia is. She goes by Mia, but I can't imagine why. Her full name is Amelia Pond – sort of like something from a fairytale, am I right? She's clever and funny and she's got loads of attitude. I like her. The fourth member is a bloke named Christian, but seeing as I've never met him, I've got no idea what he's like._

_It was a bit surprising, though. Torchwood One, they sent us right to these people, didn't even put up a fight. I suppose I might've had something to do with that, though – I categorically refused to work with this universe's Yvonne Hartman, so it was my dad that I was talking to, and I think my determination to get home might have scared a little. I sort of said something that maybe I didn't mean._

_No, that's a lie. I meant it. I'm not going to deny that I meant it. Some things are hard for me to admit, but I made myself a promise when I started writing these letters: I'm not going to lie. I've done too much of that already. Chances are, you'll never read these anyway, either because I'll never get back to you or because I'll have the chance to say all of this to you in person. God, I hope it's the second one. _

_I said something that maybe I shouldn't have, but I meant it._

_Dad tried to tell me that maybe I shouldn't try to come back home, back to you. He said it's too dangerous, that I shouldn't risk causing two universes to collapse into one another, because he doesn't realize that to me, it's worth it. I'm selfish like that. He tried to tell me that this wasn't what you would want, and I snapped._

_I said I didn't care what you would want._

_And I meant it._

_Please don't hate me for it. I know, I'm stupid, and blind, and so, so selfish. And if the roles were reversed, if it were you trapped so far away from me, and me home alone having just lost you, those damn universes wouldn't have lasted two seconds, because I would've risked it all to pull you back to me in a heartbeat. Because I'm selfish, and to me, the lives of all the creatures in two universes are worth the chance to spend just one more second with you._

_Selfish. So, so selfish. And you'd hate me for it afterwards, because you're a good man, and unlike me you've got your priorities straight. And no matter how much it hurts, you'll always do the right thing. Because you're a good person. Much better than me._

_And I'm sorry, Doctor, but for the first time in my life, I don't care what you would say. You can hate me all you like, but I'm breaking down the walls. I'm fracturing the universes. Because it's worth it to me, just to get back to you._

_I love you._

_All of my love,_

_Rose_

-0-0-0-

**So we finally have them making some progress, plus another heartfelt letter from Rose and – **_**gasp **_**– an appearance by our very own Amy Pond? What is happening? I actually hadn't planned to bring Amy into this story. I certainly didn't intend to bring her in as a Torchwood operative. She just sort of walked in of her own accord. She seems to do that sometimes. I have absolutely no control over her. **

**On a related note, I've actually been playing with the idea of a fic centering around a parallel universe Amy who works with Torchwood Three – would there be any interest in that? Any at all?**

**Please drop a quick review in that little blue box before you leave! Thanks!**

**-Caskett54**


	11. Chapter 11

"Try this." Amelia strides down the corridor with her arm extended, something held in her outstretched hand. She's wearing sheer black tights and a tight gray miniskirt, a brown leather jacket over a knit maroon shirt, and dark blue Converse high-tops. Rose can't help but wince at her choice of footwear; those damn shoes bring back memories of their white counterparts slapping against the ground, of red versions lifted because there's a switch on the console he needs to flip but he can't reach with his hands. Converse.

Amelia, oblivious to Rose's nostalgia, walks right up to the younger blonde girl and tries to hand her the item she's holding: a dimension hopping device with the back removed and the wires scrambled, with several additional pieces of technology wired in. "Dimension hopper with a rift energy converter," she explains, "some experimental teleports, and a few bits and pieces of sonic technology."

"Sonic?" Rose frowns at the device, but doesn't take it. "As in screwdriver?"

Amelia's expression mirrors hers. "No, as in ray gun. I took apart one of my squareness guns for this, so you'd better be grateful. I love my squareness guns."

"I used to know a man who used a squareness gun," she says. "Gone now. How many have you got?"

"Two now."

"Can I have one?" she asks. "I love squareness guns."

"No."

"Can I have a banana, then?"

Amelia's frown deepens in confusion. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Never mind," Rose says with a small smile. "If he were here, he'd understand. When did you finish this?" She nods to the device.

"Oh, late last night."

"You built a prototype dimension cannon for homework?" When they began the project, 'dimension cannon' was just their affectionate nickname for what they were building, but it quickly became the official title for the device.

"Yeah."

"You are bloody brilliant, you are." Rose turns the device over in her hands. "Any idea if it's going to work or not?"

Amelia shrugs. "None at all. I hope it's going to work, though. That'd be nice for a change. Have you told them yet?"

"That I'm using myself as a guinea pig to test the experimental dimension cannons you bring me?" Rose shakes her head. "No. They'll only stop me. They'll say it's dangerous."

"It is dangerous," Amelia reasons.

"You're helping me anyway, though."

"I like dangerous." Amelia shrugs. "And besides, I know that if I were stuck in a parallel world and Rory were still here, I'd want to get back to him regardless of any danger."

Rose looks up at that, meeting the ginger woman's eyes. "What?"

"My boyfriend," Amelia clarifies. "Remember?"

"Yeah, I remember." She does – after a particularly trying day of failure to create a functional dimension cannon, Amelia took Rose, Tosh, and Artie out to get a drink, and they met Amelia's sweet but slightly dim-witted boyfriend, Rory Williams, at the bar. "I mean, why are you comparing this to that?"

Amelia frowns again. "Well, that's what it is, right? You're not just trying to get home, you're trying to get back to someone."

Rose shakes her head slowly. "Amelia Pond," she murmurs. "You're too clever for your own good, you know that?" Still, after a moment, she sighs and nods. "Yeah, I'm trying to get back to someone."

Amelia's eyes light up. "Do tell."

Rose sighs. "He's… clever. And he's funny. And he's sweet, and brave, and so easy to love. Great hair – yeah, really fantastic hair." Amelia laughs softly at this. "Red Converse, brown suit, long trench coat. The last of the Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm, the maintenance man of the universe." Rose chuckles. "A madman with a blue box."

Amelia freezes, and Rose frowns. "What?" she asks, sounding concerned.

"Nothing," Amelia says distantly; after a moment, she shakes her head as though to clear it and blinks a few times, and when she looks back at Rose, her eyes are clear, her expression perfectly lucid. "Just – what you just said. It sort of reminded me of…" She shrugged. "I don't know, honestly. Just… something about it. I don't know. A dream I had when I was a little kid, I think. I don't know."

"I'd say that maybe you've met him," Rose says, "but he doesn't exist here. I've gone online and looked for conspiracy websites about him – there were loads in my universe. I've looked through all records from Torchwood and UNIT. He just isn't here."

"Hang on," Amelia says. "How'd you get access to UNIT records?"

"I know a guy," Rose replies simply.

Amelia frowns. "And why would there be conspiracies about your boyfriend?"

"Because he's an alien," Rose states calmly, as though it's the most normal, mundane, ordinary, everyday thing in the world (which, let's be honest, when you're talking about Torchwood, it sort of is). She doesn't bother to correct Amelia – she sort of likes hearing him referred to as her boyfriend. It's kind of nice. Makes her smile. Maybe someday it could actually be true. Her eyes slide shut as she imagines it – traveling again, the Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS, together, as they should be. Him introducing them, going from, _"Hello, I'm the Doctor, this is my friend Rose," _to _"Hello, I'm the Doctor, this is Rose, she's my girlfriend," _and maybe to _"Hello, I'm the Doctor, this is Rose, she's my fiancée," _and then to _"Hello, I'm the Doctor, this is –"_

Whoa. Slowing down. She has to get back to him first.

"Give it here," she urges, holding out her hand and wiggling her fingers; Amelia consents immediately, placing the prototype in Rose's palm. "Go ahead," Amelia says. "Give it a shot."

Rose nods, and lifts her hand to press the button, but hesitates – she can't find the Doctor if she's dead or trapped in the Void or something. "You're sure this is safe, right?" she asks warily.

"Ninety-nine percent sure," Amelia replies. "Well, ninety-eight. Well… eighty-five. Well…"

"Oh, screw it," Rose interrupts. Prudence and caution will not bring her back to him; acts of boldness and bravery and occasionally downright stupidity will. She has to be strong. She has to have faith. She has to venture out into the unknown with nothing but the hope of returning home, to him, to guide her.

So she squeezes her eyes shut in anticipation and brings her hand down on the button.

And absolutely nothing happens.

After a second, she hesitantly opens one eye; seeing exactly the same surroundings she had hoped to leave behind, she opens the other eye and tosses the prototype to Amelia, who catches it with ease. "Nothing."

"No, there was something!" Amelia says brightly. "You – you sort of – flickered or something –"

Rose gives her a sad smile. "Shut up, Pond. We both know I didn't."

Amy looks down at the floor, shuffling her Converse-clad feet. "Yeah," she mutters, downcast. "But this isn't it, okay? We'll keep trying. I'm not giving up."

Rose grins softly. "Of course not. You're Amelia Pond. Defeat isn't even in your vocabulary."

Amelia offers up a weak grin in return and nods. "Yeah," she murmurs. "So. When are you going to tell the others that you're testing the prototypes?"

Rose's gaze flicks up to the ceiling, then down to her trainers, over to the wall, everyone but Amelia. After a moment, she says softly, "When they need to know."

Amelia nods, not in approval, but in understanding. "Alright," she agrees quietly. "Head to the lab, then? Help out the team?"

Rose nods. "Yeah. I suppose so."

-0-0-0-

This goes on, this little arrangement of theirs. Amy smuggles Rose the dimension cannon prototypes and Rose figures out whether or not they work in the simplest, crudest way possible. She tries them out, and they wait to see if anything happens.

Nothing ever does.

Day after day after day, prototype after prototype, and they aren't getting any further. Artie thinks they need more power. Seth thinks they need a greater understanding of the way the walls between universes work. Amelia thinks they need both.

Rose thinks they need a Doctor.

Suzie Costello has agreed to let Tosh spend her days working on the dimension cannon at Torchwood One, provided that Mickey stay at Torchwood Three. Her original compromise was that Rose, too, would not take part in the dimension cannon project either, but the little blonde girl fought back hard to be a part of it, and eventually an agreement was reached. Tosh could stay at Torchwood One until the dimension cannon was completed or abandoned. Mickey would stay at Torchwood Three. Rose would split the difference. When Torchwood Three had a case, Rose was required to come back and work on it, but when they didn't have aliens or whatever to deal with, she was allowed to stay in London.

She never thought she'd see the day where she hoped to wake up in the morning and go to Torchwood Tower. Then again, not long ago, she never thought she'd see the day where she woke up anywhere other than the TARDIS.

_How long are you gonna stay with me? Forever. I made my choice a long time ago and I am never gonna leave you. They keep trying to split us up, but they never ever will. Never say never ever. I want you safe. Have a fantastic life. You can't do this to me. It was a better life. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Now he's got me. The whole thing would fracture. Two universes would collapse. So? I love you._

It all blends together into one jumbled thought in her mind, all the things she ever said to convince him or herself that she would be with him for the rest of her life. She was such a fool. So naïve. So blind, couldn't see. She'd have to leave him someday.

But, being Rose Tyler, she'd have to find her way back.

-0-0-0-

_Doctor,_

_I miss you. Have I mentioned that recently? Well, there you go. I miss you. _

_We've made no progress on the dimension cannon. Everyone's working their hardest, Tosh and Amelia and Seth and Artie, and no one more than me, though I'm afraid I can't do much. I've always sort of felt small and stupid beside Tosh, but that's nothing compared to this. Seth is brilliant, and Artie has a photographic memory and a degree in pretty much everything, and Amelia is just the cleverest human I've ever met. She's a genius, Doctor, the only person I've ever known who even comes close to being as clever as you. And she's stubborn. I get the feeling that if any one person on this team is going to get me home, it's going to be her. She's just so brilliant, and she never, ever gives up. Never loses hope. She's that girl who knows there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and for her it's like a star – even when she can't see it, she knows that it's there. Even when everything around her is darkness, somehow she never loses sight of that light. She knows it's going to get better and she won't stop trying until it does. She's so optimistic. Sometimes I wish I had her strength._

_Since there isn't much to report, but I still feel like I need to talk to you, I'm going to use this letter to write down all the things I wanted to say to you but never got the chance. Not every last one, of course. There isn't enough paper in two universes for that. But some. Maybe someday I'll say them. Hopefully someday I'll say them. If I'm lucky, I'll have the rest of my life to say them. But, you know. Just in case._

_I love you. That one's easy. Just three tiny words that somehow say so much. You don't need long metaphors or similes or complicated, cheesy analogies. I don't have to tell you that you're a ray of sunshine in my otherwise dark world or something like that. I just have to tell you I love you. Simple, short, sweet. Beautiful. I love you._

_You're brilliant. You're mad, clever, insane, gorgeous, wonderful, fantastic, brilliant. You're everything to me and I wish I'd had the strength to face you and tell you just how much you mean long before I ever knew I'd lose you. It seems silly and counterintuitive, but humans, it seems, are only able to admit what they truly feel when far too much is at stake. When it's their last chance. Their last chance to say it._

_I'm better with you. You always say that I made you better, but you never realize that the reverse is just as true. I was useless, the school dropout with no A-levels, the shop girl living with her mum. I was nothing. Unimportant. Don't try to tell me otherwise, because it's true. I was unimportant. Nobody. But you took me and you made me somebody. You showed me just how big the universe is, just how dangerous, just how marvelous, just how incredibly, heartbreakingly beautiful. You opened my eyes. And yes, I think I did make you better in some ways. When you came to me, you were hurt. Angry. The battle-hardened warrior. You were cold, harsh, sharp. I was warm, soft, delicate. Having me there made you better. And making you better made me better._

_I know I try to act strong, but sometimes I need to be weak. I need to be held, protected. I think you know this, or at least some part of you knows this. You do protect me. You've always protected me. And I've shrugged it off, rebelled, insisted that I could take care of myself, but honestly, Doctor, sometimes I can't. Sometimes I just need to break down, be vulnerable. Sometimes I need to fall, and sometimes I need someone there to catch me. Like you. My Doctor. Always there to catch me, even before I knew I was falling. _

_God, I love you. You see me for who I am, and sometimes I hate you for it, but you know what? I think you're perfect. Yes, you're flawed. Of course you're flawed. Everyone is. But somehow… that's what makes you perfect. Does that make any sense, or am I being too puzzlingly human for your Time Lord brain to handle?_

_If you only ever remember one thing that I tell you, make sure it's this: I love you, my Doctor. Because you are my Doctor. And someday, hopefully soon, I'd like to be your Rose. _

_All of my love,_

_Rose_

-0-0-0-

**I'm having a lot of fun writing Amy and Rose - they're my two favorite companions and I think they'd get along really well if they ever met. What do you guys think? Actually, what do you think of this story in general? Please leave your thinkful thoughts in the little review box down there. I will give you hugs and chocolate!**

**Yeah, thinkful is a word now. Because I say so.**

**Love you guys!**

**-Caskett54**


	12. Chapter 12

She's wearing dark jeans, a dark pink shirt, and an indigo blue leather bomber jacket when it happens.

It's been months since they brought the project to Torchwood One. Months of monotony, months of no progress made. Until now.

Amelia calls her at three in the morning with excitement clear in her voice. At first, Rose thinks it's just that she's hyped up on all the caffeine she's had to drink to pull near all-nighters working on the dimension cannons, but as the ginger girl babbles on, it soon becomes clear that she's got a good reason to be excited – she's completed a new prototype, and she's got high hopes for this model. So, with the numbers **3:18 **glowing red on her alarm clock, Rose Tyler throws on the first clothes her fingers find, makes herself a cup of coffee and downs it in under a minute, gets in the car, and drives straight to Torchwood Tower.

Amelia is waiting for her out front; lit only by the moon and the dim yellow streetlamps, she looks paler than ever; her red waves are tugged back into a hasty ponytail; she wears crumpled jeans and a loose bright orange shirt that somehow manages not to clash with her hair; and a dark gray messenger bag dangles from her shoulder. "Good, you came," she says, turning and heading inside Torchwood Tower, sounding completely lucid despite the earliness of the hour.

"You thought I wouldn't?" Rose asks as she follows her inside, unable to keep the _I-just-woke-up-and-I'm-not-yet-fully-conscious _bleariness out of her tone.

"Well, it is early," Amelia reasons. "Then again, probably couldn't stay away, right?" She opens the flap of the messenger bag, reaches inside, and draws out her latest prototype. Like most of the others, it is a dimension hopping device which has been taken apart, wired into many other pieces of technology – both Torchwood and alien – and put back together. Rose takes it delicately, handling it like it might shatter and crumble to dust if she squeeze it too tight. "Are you sure about this one?"

"Yeah," Amelia says brightly.

"How sure?" Rose demands. "Really sure, or Amy Pond sure?"

Amelia frowns. "What's that about?"

"What's what about?"

"Amy," Amelia elaborates. "Nobody calls me Amy. What's that about?"

Rose shrugs. "Dunno. Just sort of feels right. Don't know why. Sorry, Amelia."

"You know, I do prefer Mia."

"Tough. You're Amelia." She gives a small, hopeful smile. "See you on the other side, then."

And she presses down the button of the dimension cannon.

There's a blinding flash of blue-white light, the sensation of a thousand lightning strikes that somehow don't hurt a bit, the feeling of being thrown back and forth, of bouncing and ricocheting –

And then the world blurs into focus, and she's standing exactly where she was before.

With a few differences.

For one, there's no Amelia. For another, there's Adeola.

The pretty dark-skinned woman is sitting behind the receptionist desk in the lobby of Torchwood Tower, which looks exactly the same as it had before. She looks exhausted, and a large coffee cup sits on the desk next to her. When she sees Rose, her eyes widen, and she stands. "Who the hell are you?" she demands. "How did you get in here?"

Rose frowns. "Adeola, it's me."

"How do you know my name?" Adeola asks, both fearful and forceful. "Who are you?"

"It's me!" Rose insists. "Rose, Rose Tyler! Adeola, you know me!"

"I've never seen you before in my life!" Adeola cries; hitting the com button, she shouts, "Security!"

And then the blue light is back, and the numb lightning, and the sensation of being flung back and forth. And then Adeola is gone and Amelia's standing there with an excited and expectant expression on her face, clasping some piece of technology with a touchscreen between her hands.

"It worked!" she shrieks happily, tapping the screen, appearing to be going through data. "You were gone! There was this flash of blue, and then – zap! You were gone! Only for a few seconds, true, but still!" She scrolls through the readings, and gives a shrill, high-pitched laugh. "You travelled!" she cries. "You really did – you broke through!"

And Rose can barely comprehend her words.

But she gets the message.

She did it. She really did it. She broke through the walls. She forced her way into another universe. She made it.

Only she didn't.

And then she registers the pain.

She groans, dropping to the ground – every molecule of her body is throbbing, aching, crying out, and she feels like she's been run over repeatedly by an eighteen-wheeler. Her head is pounding, blood is roaring in her ears –

"Rose?" Amelia asks, concerned. "You alright?"

"Fine," Rose chokes out through gritted teeth. "Should've guessed. Ripping through the fabric of reality cannot feel good. Especially without a capsule." She groans again. "I'm fine. I'll be fine. I can handle it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," she says, getting to her feet and giving a curt little nod; the pain is ebbing away, but it's left her body sore.

"On the bright side," Amelia puts in, "you did it. You made it home."

Rose begins to nod, but stops suddenly. Because something's occurring to her right then and there, and it's taking her a little while to process the implications of it, but slowly, she's realizing that Amelia's wrong. She didn't do it. Not by a long shot. "No," she says brokenly. "I didn't."

Amelia frowns. "What do you mean? You disappeared. I saw you. Judging by these readings, you travelled between universes."

"Yeah."

"You weren't in this reality for a second there."

"Yeah."

"So in what way did you not do it?"

"It was the wrong one." Rose winces. "The wrong reality. It was the wrong reality."

Amelia's eyes widen. "The wrong alternate reality? How many are there?"

"Millions," Rose gasps. "Billions. Trillions. I don't know. An infinite number." This is a problem. A big problem. A problem she didn't foresee.

All this time, she was thinking that if she could just manage to break out of this universe, she'd be able to get home. It never crossed her mind that she wouldn't end up back in the universe she started out in. She never even thought about the countless other parallels out there.

"Then how do we get you back to your reality?"

"I don't know, Amelia!" Rose bashes the heels of her hands into the sides of her head. "I don't know! I didn't think of this!"

Amelia backs down, taking a step away from the fuming Rose Tyler. "It's okay," she says softly. "We're going to figure this out. We'll get you home." When she gets not reply, she adds, "I'm not going to stop trying until you're home. You got that?"

Rose nods, hesitantly at first, but with more conviction a second later. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, okay. Thanks."

"Anytime." Amelia looks down at her data. "Okay, there's some really useful stuff here. We're a lot further than we were yesterday. I think we might actually be able to pull something together. But –" She stops.

"But what?"

"But I can't do this alone," she finishes. "I'm clever, but I'm not that clever. I'm going to need help."

"Oh." The deeper meaning of her statement hits Rose a second later. _"Oh."_

"Yeah," Amelia agrees.

"Seth is going to be livid."

"I know," she says. "But we knew going into this we'd have to tell him eventually."

"Actually," Rose admits, "I was kind of hoping we wouldn't have to come clean until after we found a way to get me home, and I could just leave you to deal with the wrath of Seth."

Amelia laughs. "No such luck, though, huh?" she asks.

"Guess not, no."

"Yeah." Amelia sucks in a breath. "Well, Seth likes you, and I have a long record of past screw-ups, so it shouldn't be too hard to get him to lay most of the blame on me. I can't promise to take the full force of it, though. When he's cross, he's got plenty of anger to go around." She seems to notice the blank look that sits on Rose's face as the blonde woman stares off into space, lost in thought. "Rose?"

"Huh?" Rose pulls herself out of her mind, shaking her head quickly as though to clear it. "I'm okay."

"You sure?"

She nods. "Yeah."

Amelia nods slowly, as though in agreement, but the words which come out of her mouth are, "I don't believe you."

Rose looks up, meeting her gaze. Her expression is miserable but accepting; her eyes are heavy with sadness and pain; her voice is hoarse and weak as she whispers, "Good."

-0-0-0-

_Doctor,_

_Seth was livid._

_Sorry, that was a bit out of context, wasn't it? I should explain why Seth was livid. I guess I haven't mentioned this in these letters, for obvious (if not good) reasons, but Amy and I have been __testing the dimension cannon. 'Testing' makes it sound worse than it is, or maybe it doesn't, because maybe it is just that bad. Oh, God, I'm contradicting myself now. The truth is, it scares me, what we're doing. It scares me to death. But I do it because I know it'll get me back to you faster. It might be the only thing that gets me back to you at all._

_Basically, whenever Amy has a prototype dimension cannon, she brings it to me, and I try it out, just to see if it works. Until last night, not a single one of the prototypes did anything but get my heart beating fast (either in anticipation of it working right or fear of it going horribly wrong or some combination of the two, I don't know). _

_Please don't be cross, Doctor, I'm getting enough of that from Seth. And at some point, I'm going to have to tell my mum, and you know how she gets. I know if you were here, you'd be furious with me for being so reckless and putting myself at risk and doing stupid, irresponsible, dangerous things that I know could get me killed. You'd be so angry, because you'd be so scared. That's how you get when I put myself in harm's way. So scared for my safety that it comes out as anger. And then you'd say you're sorry and hold me until my heartbeat steadied and the tears stopped coming. And then you'd hold me for a little while after that, just for good measure. Because we fought, but neither of us were ever angry. We were just both so, so scared._

_People – that includes Time Lords – do stupid things when they're scared._

_Maybe that's why I've been offering myself up as a willing lab rat to test the dimension cannons. Because I'm so scared of losing you forever that it cancels out the fear of dying, or being trapped in the Void, or anything like that. _

_I can practically hear you yelling at me for putting my life on the line. I think I've practically been able to hear you yelling at me for putting my life on the line since I started testing Amelia's prototypes, but since nothing ever happened, it's just been a quiet annoyance in the back of my head. Something I was barely even aware of. Now that something's actually happened, you're loud. And somehow it's not even really like I'm hearing it in your voice, because then it would be worth all the yelling, just to hear your voice. I can just hear what you would be saying. Does that make any sense?_

_At any rate, Doctor, please shut up._

_I didn't mean it. I would actually love to hear you shouting at me, if it were actually you, and not my own loneliness driving me mad. Literally mad. I'm starting to fear for my own sanity. I haven't 'seen' you, as in imagined you, as in heard your voice beside me, like I did in the early days. That hasn't happened since Bad Wolf Bay. But still. Though I think I read somewhere that mad people don't think they're going mad, so maybe that means I'm safe._

_Gotten a bit off track, haven't I? The point is, Amy called me at around three in the morning last night, all excited because she figures she's finally put together a working prototype. This isn't the first time she's been 'absolutely sure' that one of these is going to work, mind you. But this time was different._

_This time, it actually did work._

_There was this flash of blue lightning or something that looked like blue lightning, and then I was somewhere else. Well, really, I was in the same place, just a different universe. But I was only there for a few seconds, and then I got pulled back here. Amy's data confirmed it – I broke through the walls. I travelled between universes. So don't be cross with me for risking my life testing these prototypes, Doctor, because see where it got us? I'm not dead, and I'm one step closer to finding you._

_Only one step, though, because it was the wrong universe. I knew that instantly, because Adeola Jones was there – you remember her? In this universe, she works for Torchwood One, same as in ours. Only in our universe, she died in the Battle of Canary Wharf. Because she was there, I knew it couldn't be the right universe. _

_This isn't a problem that I thought of, Doctor. I was so busy concentrating on breaking out of this prison of a universe that I didn't even stop to think that I might not be breaking out to the right place. And there's so many parallel universes, Doctor, countless numbers of them. How am I supposed to get back to the right one? It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack of infinite size._

_But that's not my only fear. It might not even be my biggest fear._

_No, I think my biggest fear is that I won't be able to tell the difference between the needle and the hay._

_All of my love, _

_Rose_

-0-0-0-

**A lovely person called Maggie left a review when I posted the last chapter. Normally I would reply, but Maggie reviewed as a guest, and anyway, she made a pretty good point that I felt like I should clarify to all of you. She noticed that when Rose was talking to Amelia about the Doctor, Amy seemed to know something about him. She passed it off as a dream she had when she was a kid. If you'll remember, it seemed to be the phrase 'a madman with a blue box' that triggered this reaction, which is of course how the 11th Doctor has described himself to Amy. Some of you - Maggie included - probably frowned at this, wondering how the Amelia Pond of Pete's World could possibly know the Doctor. The explanation for this is, quite simply, she doesn't. There is no Doctor in Pete's World, at least not in this story. But I like to think that, because there's been so much travel between the Doctor's universe and Pete's World, the two universes have sort of bled together a little bit, allowing fragments of memories to pass from the mind of one person to their counterpart in the parallel world. Because the Doctor is so important to Amy in the main universe, an echo of that has been transmitted to the Amelia Pond of Pete's universe. Maggie, darling - I hope that clears things up for you.**

**-Caskett54**


	13. Chapter 13

Dark jeans, a dark pink shirt, and an indigo blue leather bomber jacket.

This is more than an outfit now. It's become like a suit of armor for her, a uniform. A promise. It tells her, _you will do this. You will get home._

Seth was very cross at first, but eventually he calmed down. Rose and Amelia promised him that they would never test the prototypes again without his permission and the input of the entire team. And Seth agreed that they would allow for testing – under supervision, of course, and only after extensive simulations have been run to ensure the safety of the device. No one was all that happy about the compromise – Rose thought they were moving too slowly, and Seth thought they were moving too fast – but it worked. It wasn't a happy medium, but it was as close as they were going to get.

Rose doesn't wear the dark jeans, the pink shirt, and the blue bomber every day. But she wears them every time she tests a dimension cannon.

Most of the time, nothing happens. Seth, Artie, and Tosh have instituted precautionary protocols into the programming of the prototypes, safeguards which Amelia's designs didn't have. They make it less risky, but Rose thinks they also might be interfering with the functions of the cannon, because the first eleven times they test a prototype after they agree to do everything as a team, she goes absolutely nowhere.

It's not until the twelfth test that something actually happens.

It isn't what was supposed to happen, though.

It's nothing bad; it's just… nothing good. That blue lightning sparks around her, and for a moment, she dares to hope. But when it fades a split second later, she hasn't travelled between dimensions.

She's travelled across the lab.

"Congratulations, you lot," she tells them, tossing them the prototype. "You've successfully created a teleportation device. Ship it over to UNIT, tell them you finished Project Indigo for them."

This comment has a fallout she didn't anticipate – apparently, she isn't supposed to know about Project Indigo. She insists she heard about it on an online conspiracy website, doesn't mention that in fact she knows about Indigo because Pete Tyler mentioned it casually over dinner one night. He probably wouldn't be Director for much longer if she let that slip.

The thirteenth and fourteenth tests do nothing. The fifteenth teleports her down two floors. The sixteenth teleports her down three floors. The seventeenth does nothing. The eighteenth transports her three hours into the future; she emerges in a cloud of crackling blue electricity to find the entire team in a tailspin as they frantically try to discover what's gone wrong. After that one, she heads straight back to her apartment and pours herself a glass of wine, hoping the buzz of alcohol will replace the buzz of time travel.

She misses that life. So much it's like a physical pain. It – all of it, the travelling, the danger, the adventure, the TARDIS, and him most of all – was like a part of her, an extension of her very being, and now that it's gone, she's at a loss.

She read somewhere that sometimes, after a person loses a body part – an arm, say, or a leg – they can sometimes feel it aching as though it's still there. That's almost how she feels. Her life as Rose Tyler, companion and time-traveler, has been stripped away from her. Sawed off. Amputated. But sometimes, she still feels it. Calling out to her. Pulling at her. A tiny voice in the back of her head, begging to be heard.

These are the thoughts which fill her waking hours.

This is why she fears for her sanity.

-0-0-0-

The nineteenth test takes her to a parallel world.

At first, she just thinks she's been teleported again, to another lab somewhere else in this building. It's the exact same layout of the lab she and the team are working in, but it's clearly not in use. The lights are out; cobwebs hang in the corners; everything is stacked neatly and impersonally, like it was cleaned up and then forgotten; and there's a clear inch of dust on the tabletops. Rose is just beginning to muse on why Torchwood would let an unused lab get so dirty, but then the blue electricity flashes again, and she's right back where she stated and Amelia is letting out a triumphant yell.

"We did it!" the Scottish redhead squeals. "We actually did it – you travelled! You were in an alternate universe!"

Rose's eyes widen; she did it. Even with all of Seth and Artie's safeguard protocols, she still managed to travel between universes. This realization is enforced by the sudden onset of that same pain that struck her the night when she first travelled between parallels, the night she first wore her dark jeans, pink shirt, and blue bomber. She groans, bending over – it's just the same as last time, and she feels like she's been run over repeatedly by an eighteen wheeler and left lying on the road, broken and bruised. "Ow," she gasps.

"Rose?" Artie steps towards her, extending her hand with a worried expression on her face. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," Rose forces out through gritted teeth as she clutches at her midriff, hugging herself tightly as though she can hold herself together, prevent herself from splintering and shattering and falling to pieces all over the floor of the lab. "I'll be fine." The pain is fading, slowly but surely, leaving her with nothing more than a dull ache. "Dimension jumping's a bitch. Ow."

"You're sure you're alright?"

"Yeah," she insists, straightening up. "Nothing physically wrong with me, it's just the effects of the dimension cannon. You feel like you've been run over for a bit, but really, you're fine. I'm fine."

Artie watches her doubtfully, but steps back nonetheless; Rose turns to Amelia, asking, "Was it home?" The Scottish woman continues tapping away at the screen of her data pad, giving no response, so Rose repeats the question, more forcefully this time. "Amelia, was it home?"

"Hmm?" Amelia looks up. "No way to tell, really. I'm saving the coordinates, though, just in case." She hits a button on her pad. "There. Saved."

"Thanks," Rose says grudgingly.

"So," Seth puts in, "the way I see it, we've got three problems to solve. One – we can't get Rose out of this universe into a parallel one. Seems like we just overcame that hurdle. Two – we can't hone in on Rose's universe. And three – we can't get Rose to stay in a parallel world once she's there." He looks over to Amelia. "Mia, you work on identifying Rose's home universe. Artie and I will try to figure out why she keeps getting pulled back here."

-0-0-0-

Six days later, Seth shows up on Rose's doorstep at eleven o' clock at night, soaking wet. His clothes are drenched, sticking to his skin; his curls are so wet that they lie flat, plastered to his skull. "I've figured it out," he announces, trying to step inside, but she holds out a hand to stop him. "Whoa, hang on. Don't want you dripping all over my flat. Why are you soaked?"

"It's raining out," he states, speaking of the torrential downpour which is, in fact, going on outside.

"I know," Rose agrees. "Ever heard of an umbrella?"

He frowns. "Didn't think of that. Sort of left in a hurry. Thought you'd want to know this ASAP." He says it like it's all one word instead of saying the individual letters – 'ASAP rather than 'A.S.A.P.'

"Alright, I'm listening." She leans against the doorway. "What did you figure out?"

"Why we can't get you to stay in a parallel world," he says. "Why you keep on just coming back. Can I please come in?"

She hesitates, but eventually says, "Hang on a sec. I'll get you a towel." She turns and hurries to the bathroom, grabbing a fluffy white bath towel from the rack. She brings it out and hands it to Seth, telling him, "You're mopping up any water you leave behind."

He gives a short nod, to show that he understands, and dries himself off as quickly as he can. He doesn't do a very thorough job of it – he just makes sure he's dry enough that he won't drip all over everything. When he's finished, he hands the towel to Rose and steps inside.

"Wow," he says quietly, looking around. "This is… nice."

"Yeah," she agrees, tossing the towel over onto the couch. "Daughter of Pete Tyler, remember?"

"Yeah," he says. "Still, just…" He shrugs. "I don't know. It's nice."

It is nice. The dining room floor is polished hardwood; the kitchen is smooth tile; the living room is carpeted in light blue. The walls most everywhere are painted deep royal blue (TARDIS blue). The dining table is much too large for one person. The couches are black leather, positioned around a glass coffee table, facing a large flat-screen television. The counters in the kitchen are polished granite; the long stretch of counter which separates the kitchen from the living room is equipped with barstools, and that's where she eats most of her meals. It's too lonely sitting all by herself at that dining room table that seems like it was made for a family of at least six. The lighting is good; the ceilings are high; floor-to-ceiling windows on one living room wall look out over the city. It's a great place, as flats go.

It's just not home.

"Sit," Rose instructs, gesturing to the barstools, and Seth heads in that direction. "Do you want something to drink?"

He shrugs as he sits down on one of the stools. "Whatever you've got is fine."

She walks to the refrigerator and opens it, taking out a half-empty bottle of expensive chardonnay. "Is wine too girly for you?"

"Not at all," he replies, and she allows herself a light laugh as she reaches up to one of the cupboard and takes out two wine glasses. "So," she says as she takes the stopper out of the bottle and fills the glasses with the pale golden liquid. "Tell me what was so important that you came running through the rain to my flat in the middle of the night to tell me."

"I've figured it out," he says.

"Yeah," she agrees, holding out a glass to him from across the counter. "I got that part."

"It's the walls between universes," he says as he takes the glass from her. "They're not what we thought they were."

She leans over the counter, holding her glass in one hand and balancing her chin in the other. "Explain.

"They're not solid and unbending, like we thought," Seth tells her. "They're –" He hesitates, searching for a word that will sum up what he's trying to say in simple terms that she can understand. "They're elastic. They move, they bend, they stretch. If you push hard enough on them, they'll give, and you can sort of – sort of bend them enough that you can step into a parallel world. But they're not shaped to stay like that, so eventually, they snap back into place." He takes a sip of his wine, swallows it, clears his throat, and continues. "We thought that when you jumped to an alternate reality, you were breaking through, like you were taking a wrecking ball to a brick wall and stepping through the hole you created. But you weren't. The walls aren't walls; they're more like… like pieces of stretchy fabric stretched tight over a frame. You pushed on them, and they gave way just enough for you to step into an alternate reality. But doing that sort of put strain on them, and they weren't meant to stretch that far, so they did what elastic things do – they snapped back into place, thus pushing you back into this reality."

Rose frowns as she sips her wine; she sort of understands, but not completely. "So I haven't actually broken through the walls. I've just… pushed on them."

"And they pushed back," Seth agrees. "Which is why you got through to a parallel world, but you didn't stay there for long."

She nods. "And they won't stay stretched; so long as I'm only pushing through, they'll always snap back, and I'll get sent back here."

"Exactly."

"So if I want to stay in a parallel world –"

"You can't just push on the fabric walls," he finishes. "You're actually going to have to rip through them."

"And do you think we can do that?"

He shrugs. "If it's a matter of force exerted, if we just haven't met the power requirements, we could find a stronger power source or increase the efficiency of the one we've got. Maybe we're just going about it all wrong, though – it's possible that we're basically hitting the walls with a dull club when what we need is nothing more than a sharp scalpel. We could look into that – Artie could probably crunch some numbers, come up with something brilliant. On the other hand, it's possible that –"

"Seth," Rose interrupts. "Just give me your best guess. Can we do this? Yes or no?"

"Best guess?" He thinks for a second, and then his lips curve up in a grin. "Yes."

_Yes._

She's doing this. They're doing this.

She's going home.

-0-0-0-

**Sorry about the late update. A lot's been going on lately and it slipped my mind. Merry Christmas, by the way. I have Dalek ornaments and I made a Weeping Angel tree topper.**

**I don't know if anyone noticed the alliteration back there. 'Seth, Artie, and Tosh have instituted **_**precautionary protocols**_** into the **_**programming**_** of the**_** prototypes.**_**' I swear, that wasn't deliberate. I only just noticed it.**

**Okay, what I want to know is, how many of you have read my other multi-chapter, The Dead Reunited? **

**-Caskett54**


	14. Chapter 14

Rose Tyler hasn't spoken to her mum in a few months.

It's not even that she just kept on 'forgetting to call'. It was a conscious choice. Many conscious choices, actually. The number of times she picked up her phone and opened her contacts, her finger hovering over her mother's name… and then put the phone down on the counter again and walked away. Jackie's had plenty to deal with, what with raising baby Tony Tyler (who really is quite adorable), so she hasn't been sending Rose texts and emails and leaving her messages begging to talk. So Rose has simply been able to say to herself, _later. I'll tell her later. At the right time._

But she's starting to come to the realization that for something like this, there is no right time.

Her mum has no idea. Not about Torchwood One, not about the dimension cannon project, not about Rose testing the prototypes, not about any of it. No idea whatsoever. Because Rose hasn't told her. And Pete, at Rose's request, has remained silent.

But she always knew she would have to break the news to her mum eventually.

The longer she puts it off, the worse it's going to be. She realizes that now.

So she picks up her mobile phone and opens her contacts, scrolls down to her mum's name and, after a moment's hesitation, taps it with her thumb.

Jackie picks up on the third ring.

"Rose!" Her tone is delighted, and Rose can't help but feel a pang of guilt – maybe she shouldn't, not now, maybe she should just wait for another time, she doesn't want to spoil her mum's good mood – _no._ The longer she puts it off, the worse it's going to be. She has to do this.

"Hey, Mum," she greets, painfully aware of the weary hoarseness of her voice. She hopes that Jackie won't pick up on it through the phone, but of course, she does. "Rose?" she asks with concern in her voice. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

Rose clears her throat. "Nothing," she says quickly. "Nothing's wrong. Can, ah –" She runs a hand nervously through her hair. "Can I meet you for coffee?"

"Sure!" Jackie says eagerly, and then adds, "Oh, wait. Pete's at work, I've got to look after Tony. You mind coming by the house?"

"Yeah," Rose agrees. "Sure. No problem."

"Brilliant. I'll put a pot on, come by whenever, okay?"

"Yeah." Rose tugs on a strand of her hair. "Thanks. I – I'll be right there." And then she hangs up the phone.

Her hand is shaking as she lowers it, trying to place the phone down on the counter gently, but things don't go as planned – it slips from her quaking fingers a few inches above its destination and drops, clattering against the counter with a noise that makes her jump. All her senses are heightened; every brush of air against her skin feels like a light stab of pain; every little noise is magnified; every tiny bit of movement in the corner of her eye grabs her attention. Her mind is reeling, she can't stop her hands shaking, and she's shivering even though it's not cold.

She knows this sensation. She knows it well.

It's fear.

Not ordinary fear. Not life-or-death, oh-dear-the-aliens-are-coming-to-kill-us-better-run fear. That sort of fear sends adrenaline coursing through her veins. That sort of fear brings a grin to her face as her heart beats faster and her hand finds his. That sort of fear wakes her up.

No, this is overwhelming fear. This is the fear of the thing that lurks in the shadows behind you. This is the fear of the monsters under your bed. This is the fear that edges into your mind when you're home alone, making every little noise sound like an intruder. This is the fear that sends you into a frozen tailspin, eyes darting from side to side as you curse the fact that you can't see the entire room around you all at once. This is the fear that paralyzes you, makes your breathing shallow, makes your tongue dry as sandpaper, makes the thump-thump-thumping of your heart roar in your ears like a conquering drumbeat. This is the fear of the darkness, the fear of the emptiness that claws at your inside, the fear of loneliness and misery and anger and hatred and fear itself.

This is the sort of fear that shuts you down.

She's faced the most terrifying things in the universe. She's watched people burn before her eyes and there was nothing she could do to save them. She's faced her death so many times. She's watched her Doctor vanish in golden fire and be replaced with a new man. She's said goodbye to her closest friends. She's lost her grip on a lever and tumbled towards eternal damnation in the Void. She's said goodbye to him.

She thought that, after all that, she knew what fear was like.

She was wrong.

That wasn't fear. This is fear. Because although, yes, she would've chosen to leave her mum and stay with him – _everyone leaves home eventually; I made my choice a long time ago and I am never gonna leave you – _Jackie Tyler is the one person in the universe (two universes, actually) who has always been there for her. No matter what. Through her childhood and teenage years, her mum was there. Through disappearances and alien invasions, her mum was there. When the old Doctor died and left her with a new pretty boy she didn't know at all, her mum was there. When she became trapped in this alternate world, far away from the life and the man she loved, her mum was there.

Jackie Tyler is a constant, always has been and always will be. She is unchanging and unwavering in her love for Rose, and she is always there.

That's why the prospect of having to tell her that she's risking her life just to leave her scares Rose Tyler more than any of the terrifying dangers she's faced.

She's betraying the trust of the one person who has always loved her, has always been there when she needed her. And it scares her to death.

But the longer she waits, the worse it's going to be. She's chosen this path; she's committed. She's risked life and limb for this, put herself on the line, dedicated all this time to getting back to him. She can't give up now. She is going home.

But to do that, she has to admit to her mother that home is no longer with her.

-0-0-0-

She's barely knocked once when the door swings open.

"Rose!" Jackie smiles widely. Her hair is disheveled, her features aged and weary, and she doesn't look like she's gotten much sleep. But still, standing there in the doorway of her extravagant home, holding her infant son on her hip, she looks happier and younger than Rose can remember her ever looking.

She really isn't making this easy.

"Come on it," Jackie beckons, stepping out of the doorway and letting Rose step inside. "Head into the living room – I've got to put Tony down for his nap, and then I'll be right back down, okay?"

Rose nods mutely; Jackie beams, and turns and hurries up the stairs. Rose wanders into the living room in silence and collapses onto the couch. And she sits there, trying to formulate a speech in her head. This will be so much easier if she knows what she's going to say ahead of time.

_Mum, there's something I have to tell you… _no, that's not right. It can be taken as good or bad news – Jackie will either get very worried instantly or think that Rose is engaged to be married or something.

_Mum, I've been working with Torchwood One on… _no, too forward, too direct. She needs to dodge the real subject for a bit. It'll work better.

_Mum, I've been thinking… _no, that's not right, either.

_Mum, it's about the Doctor… _yes, she supposes it sort of is, but if she knows her mother, she'll stop her right then and there before she can go any further. Rose needs to play this exactly right so she'll have a chance to explain.

"Well, then." Jackie hurries into the living room clutching two mugs of tea; as she sits down on the couch beside Rose, she hands her one of the mugs, which Rose takes gratefully. She takes a small sip of it, and over the top of her mug, she can see her mother peering at her through worried eyes. "You lied," Jackie says softly – not accusing, simply stating. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"No." Rose places the mug down on the table. "Mum, I…" And then she can't get anything else out past the lump in her throat. She can feel tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, and her hands are beginning to shake again. "I…"

"Shhh." Jackie slides closer to Rose and pulls her into her arms, holding her against her as though Rose was a little kid again. "Shhh, it's okay," she whispers, brushing a few loose strands of blonde hair out of her daughter's face. "It's okay." She pauses, and then asks softly, "This is about him, isn't it?"

Rose makes a quiet, strangled noise, something like an involuntary sob but much more pained, much more miserable, and somehow much stronger. She hesitates – she's afraid of what her mother's reaction will be. But she can't lie. She will not lie. So silently, she nods.

She can hear her mother's sharp intake of breath, but other than that, she gives no sign as to how she is feeling. No exclamation of anger or shock, no soft-spoken words of sadness, no whispered questions as to why Rose would betray her like this. She simply continues to gently stroke Rose's hair, and finally, after a pause which seems to go on for an eternity, she asks, "You're thinking of leaving, aren't you?"

"Bit more than thinking," Rose admits quietly. "I've been… trying. To get back. For… a while now."

Jackie draws in a deep breath. "How long?"

"A few months?" It's more of a hesitant question than a statement.

"And you haven't managed it yet."

Rose extracts herself carefully from her mother's arms, shaking her head as she sits up. "No."

"Figured as much," Jackie admits. "What if you had?"

"Sorry?"

"What if you'd managed it before now?" she reiterates. "What if you'd gotten home, gotten back to him? Would you – would you have come back to see me first?"

"Of course." Rose brushes the beginnings of a tear from the corner of her eye. "Of course. I couldn't have just left."

"Could you, though?"

"No," she breathes insistently, vehemently, passionately. "Of course not. You're my mother. I would've come back."

"But not to stay," Jackie guesses. "Just to – to say goodbye."

Rose swallows; then, in a hoarse, cracking voice, she admits, "Yeah."

"Figured as much." Jackie clears her throat, sniffles, and shifts where she sits. "Suppose I knew you wouldn't stay here long."

Rose frowns. "How could you know that? I didn't even know."

Jackie allows herself a soft, forced laugh. "Because you're my daughter. And you're not the sort to lie down and take what life gives you. You don't just let things happen. Remember?"

Rose nods slowly, remembering what she'd told her mother all that time ago (has it really only been two years, give or take? It feels like an eternity) in the little diner after the Doctor sent her home from Satellite Five. "You make a stand," she whispers, echoing what her past self had said. "You say no."

"Yeah," Jackie murmurs. "And that's what you do."

"That's what he taught me to do."

"No." She shakes her head. "That's what you do. You, Rose Tyler. All by yourself, just you." Rose is silent; she looks down at the floor, studying her shoes. Jackie places her hand over her daughter's and says quietly, "You're amazing without him, too, you know."

"I'm better with him," Rose insists.

"Maybe," Jackie agrees. "But you're alright without him, too."

"No." Rose shakes her head. "No, I'm not, Mum. I'm really not." She gets up, maneuvering around the coffee table and walking into the center of the living room, where she begins pacing restlessly. "This place isn't home, this life isn't mine, and this woman…" She gestures furiously to herself. "I don't know who she is, Mum, but she's not me!"

"Rose –"

"And I'm sorry," Rose continues. "I really am sorry, Mum, but you've got to understand, all of this –" she throws her hands out to the sides to indicate everything around her "– is wrong! And I've got to get home, because I really don't think I can keep this up much longer, this – this _act, _pretending I'm okay all the time, every single day, because I'm not! I'm as far away from okay as it's possible to be, I'm on the other side of the world from okay, I'm…" She lets out a bark of cynical laughter. "I'm in a separate parallel universe from okay! And I can't stop thinking about him, all on his own out there, because if he misses me half as much as I miss him, I know it's tearing him apart inside… And he's already got so much pain he has to carry around with him, it's not fair that… that he…" She searches for the words to explain what she's feeling, but can't seem to find them, so her rant falls flat. She falls backwards into an armchair, pressing the palms of her hands to her face and then dragging them down so they're pressed together almost in a position of prayer, covering her nose and mouth. "And I do love you, Mum," she says quietly as she lowers her hands. "I really do. I just – it's just – it's him," she finishes finally, staring up at the ceiling. "It's always been him."

"I know, sweetheart," Jackie whispers. "I know."

Rose looks over at her. "You're not cross?"

Jackie huffs a laugh. "Why would I be cross? You're following your heart, doing what's right for you. I'm your mother. I just want you to be happy. And –" She wipes a tear away, trying hard not to smudge her makeup in the process. "If you do end up leaving, I'll miss you. But I'll know that you're happy, yeah? And I'll know that you're safe, 'cause you'll be with him, and there's nothing in this universe or any other that can stop that man protecting you." She sniffles. "As he should." A pause, another sniffle, and another tear strategically wiped away. "What he did to deserve you, I'll never know."

"No." Rose shakes her head sadly, turning her gaze away from her mother. "It's what I did to deserve him."

-0-0-0-

**OH MY GOD HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVE! More importantly, HAPPY DAY BEFORE DOCTOR WHO DAY! WHO ELSE IS SCREAMING INTERNALLY BECAUSE YOU'RE SO EXCITED FOR THE SNOWMEN BUT YOU LIVE IN AN APARTMENT AND IF YOU MAKE A LOT OF NOISE PEOPLE GET MAD AT YOU (okay, maybe not exactly that)?! **

**I'm so happy. This hiatus has gone on long enough, I say. I want to be done with my Pond feels and have a good laugh over Clara, because she looks freaking hilarious.**

**Yeah, haha, good luck with that, me. That's never going to happen, seeing as you still have Rose feels over Doomsday and that was _2006_. The fact that I'm writing a Rose story doesn't help, and of course I didn't actually watch Doomsday in 2006 because I would've been, like, nine years old, but, you know. Minor details, darling. Minor details.**

**Anyway, Clara! I love her already. I've been following a lot of the press and stuff about The Snowmen, and the sorts of things everyone's saying about her make me really excited to meet her. Matt says that she 'challenges' the Doctor, which is good, because we haven't really had a companion who's challenged him since Donna. Jenna-Louise Coleman, who of course plays Clara, says that she 'kind of annoys the Doctor into being friends with her', which also makes me like her. And I don't know if anyone else here reads io9's spoiler-free reviews of Doctor Who episodes, but they did one for The Snowmen, and according to them, the chemistry works. They say that the banter and the back-and-forth is priceless. Actually, the exact words they used were '_watching them spar is like watching two pixies hopped up on Red Bull go at it_'. OH MY GOD. SO EXCITED. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!**

**Anyways, guys, talk to me! Drop me a review with your fangirl (or fanboy) spasm over The Snowmen, or better yet, tell me what you think of this story! If you want to chat and hang out and have a glimpse into how weird I really am, check out my Tumblr! My name is _ghosts-with-just-voices. _Two dashes between each word. Yes, this is shameless self-advertising. I'm new and I want followers, gosh darnit.**

**This author's note has gotten really long. Okay, wrapping up now. I love you all! Mwah!**

**-Caskett54**


	15. Chapter 15

Nobody even notices when the first star goes out.

It's some minor dwarf, barely even worth its number designation. So insignificant that no one takes notice. Even avid stargazers and professional astronomers see nothing wrong with their beloved night sky.

But then it keeps on happening.

The calls start coming in one evening, because finally, a star has vanished that people notice, a star that's a part of a constellation that everyone knows. NASA and the UK Space Agency are getting dozens, hundreds, thousands of calls, exclamations of dismay pouring in from worried star watchers across the world. The first call comes in around eleven PM; by eight the following morning, UNIT is involved; by eight-twenty, Torchwood itself is in a frenzy as all the experts gather in an effort to figure out what's going on.

But it may be too late already.

Maybe it's like a disease, and they didn't catch it soon enough. Because steadily over the course of the day, gradually picking up speed, the stars are winking out one by one. Soon there may be none left at all.

By noon, UNIT and Torchwood have agreed to pool their efforts, which never happens. All the top scientists of both organizations have congregated together in one large office in one building. And that building is Canary Wharf.

Artie is pulled away from their dimension cannon research that day, because one of her degrees is in astronomy, and people think she can help. Amelia and Seth, who are both very clever but whose expertise lies decidedly elsewhere, stay, though neither seems particularly inclined to focus on the project at hand. They're both so distracted, their thoughts elsewhere as their incredible minds struggle to come up with a reason for the stars going out.

"Come on, then." Amelia holds out the latest dimension cannon prototype. "Got high hopes for this one, we think it should definitely last you at least a bit longer."

"Yeah." Rose nods as she takes the prototype from the redheaded woman. "Any progress on getting me to the right dimension?"

Amelia winces apologetically. "Sorry. No. But I'm working on it. I promise, we'll make this work."

Rose nods. "Yeah," she agrees softly. "Wish me luck." And she hits the button on the dimension cannon.

She comes out somewhere in London, and there are fat little creatures made of some slightly shiny white stuff floating up towards spaceship, waving merrily down at people on the ground.

There's no way of knowing if this is her universe. But she's almost certain that it's a universe with a Doctor in it, because this definitely seems like his handiwork.

She joins the people watching the little things float up towards the ships, blending easily with the crowd. She doesn't have to stand there long before she hears a rather loud female voice behind her, and turns to see a woman with dark orange hair speaking into a cell phone.

"Yes, that's it, a bin," she says. "Oh, stop complaining, the car's just down the road a bit. Got to go, really got to go. Bye." She hangs up without waiting for a response, looks around a bit, and after a moment her eyes land on Rose. She walks right up to her, saying, "Listen. There's this woman that's going to come along, a tall blonde woman called Sylvia. Tell her 'that bin there'. Right, it'll all make sense. That bin there." Then she turns and walks back in the opposite direction with an enthusiastic spring in her step.

Rose watches the redheaded woman go, and then turns away, just staring off into space. Her expression is weary and sad, worn and run-down, weathered and distant. She lingers there for a few moments before she feels the tug she's come to associate with being about to be pulled back to the parallel world she's stuck in. So she turns and walks away.

As the world around her fades out (that's how it is now – sometimes she goes back in blue electricity, but with some of the latest models, she just fades in and out), she almost thinks she hears the sound of the TARDIS engines.

But of course it's just her mind playing tricks on her. It's got to be.

So she just keeps on walking until she fades entirely.

"Was that it?" she asks Amy once she's substantial enough to interact with Pete's World. "Was that home?"

"I'm telling you," Amy says for the one hundredth time, "no way to know." She taps a few buttons on her handheld device as Rose places the new prototype down on a lab table. Suddenly, the lab door swings open, and a young man who works in reception pokes his head in. "Excuse me?"

Rose, Amelia, and Seth all look up at the voice, turning to look at the man. "Sorry to bother you," he says quickly. "They want you upstairs."

Seth raises an eyebrow. "Who's 'they'?"

"The ones working on the stars," the man explains. "They want to see Doctor Landry and Miss Pond."

"Doctor Pond," Amelia corrects.

"Sorry, miss," the man says, "but the records don't list you as having a degree in anything. Officially, you're not a doctor."

"And yet," Seth puts in, "she's arguably the cleverest person in this room. I think that if she wants you to call her Doctor Pond, that'd be okay."

The man hesitates, but after a moment, he says, "Alright. Doctors Landry and Pond – they're waiting for you."

Amelia grins. "What do you think of that? They're waiting for me!" She frowns suddenly. "Why do they want me?"

The man shrugs, and Seth says, "Because you're clever."

"Yeah," Amelia agrees, "with machines. Not stars."

"You think outside the box," he adds. "These people are scientists, strictly logical, very, very… boxed in."

Amelia shrugs. "Alright. Rose, you coming?"

Rose takes an involuntary step back. "They didn't ask for me."

"Yeah, well, I'm asking for you."

"I'm not clever. Not that sort of clever."

"Come on," Amelia urges. "Like as not, this is extraterrestrial, yeah? You've got experience."

"This is Torchwood. We've all got experience."

"Yeah, shut up." She walks over to Rose, grabs her wrist, and pulls her along out the door. "Can't just leave you here, you'd get bored. And lonely."

"I'm good at lonely."

"And sad," Amelia adds. "Because no one will be able to see you. You're sad when you think no one can see you."

_I'm always sad, _Rose wants to tell her, but she doesn't. Instead, she says, "Amy, I'm fine."

"There you go again," Amelia mutters. "Mia. It's Mia. Amelia if you must. Not Amy. And you're not fine. You just pretend to be when people are watching. You're broken." She drags Rose out the door and towards the lift, but before they reach it, the Scottish redhead with the fairy-tale name pulls the younger blonde aside. "Let's do this, and then we can get back to working on fixing you."

As they head up to the meeting, neither notices that they left before Amelia had the chance to save the coordinates of the latest jump.

-0-0-0-

Rose doesn't really listen to the science talk at the meeting. It's mostly technobabble that she can't understand any better than what would come out of her Doctor's mouth. The droning tones of these scientists do nothing to enhance the entertainment factor of their explanation, whereas the way he would talk – not one but two or three miles a minute, picking up speed as he went, growing more and more frantic and excited, all wide eyes and exclamations of 'OH!' – would at least make him amusing to listen to, even though she had no idea what he was talking about.

Oh, she misses him.

She pays a bit of attention, but doesn't really pick up on anything more than what she already knew, already heard – the stars are going out. One by one, the stars are going out.

About an hour goes by, and then her cell phone chimes; she picks it up to find a text from Suzie Costello, summoning her immediately to Torchwood Three HQ per their agreement. Something's come up that, in Suzie's mind, takes precedence over Rose's work on the dimension cannon. Since there really isn't much work going on with the cannon, Rose is actually glad to get out of there – she doesn't like to spend unnecessary amounts of time in Canary Wharf.

When she arrives at Torchwood Three, Suzie and Mickey quickly explain the situation: the Silurians have made contact. They're panicking – after all, this is their world too, and they have no idea what's happening to their sky. Rose and Mickey, being the two agents who have interacted with the Silurians the most, are being sent to talk to them, explain what the human race knows about what's happening (which isn't much) and what they're doing to help the situation (which is even less). If possible, they are to enlist the help of Silurian scientists, as the Silurians are years ahead of humans in terms of technology and sciences and may be able to help.

The meeting is brief, not because it doesn't go well, but because Rose and Mickey are able to say everything that needs saying very quickly. The Silurians are a bit bothered by how little Torchwood knows about why the stars are going out, but they get over it fast and send a few of their most capable scientists to help out.

It's a bit of a job, figuring out how to get the three Silurians from Cardiff to London without any civilians noticing that there's a trio of lizard people walking around. In the end, Torchwood One sends over a helicopter. It's a very nice helicopter. There's even a little minibar with sodas and snacks.

So. That's where all of Torchwood Three's funding is going.

The Silurians join the group of scientists working on the stars at Canary Wharf, which is a bit odd for the people there who have never encountered aliens before. All of the people who work with Torchwood are completely calm about it, like green lizard people turning up and helping out is totally an everyday thing (in reality, it's a good bit more normal than what usually goes on at Torchwood One). Most of the UNIT scientists there are at least a little freaked out. All of the scientists there who aren't from Torchwood or UNIT (there are only a few of these) are obviously completely freaked out, and don't seem to be capable to focus on their work anymore.

Actually, the only person in the room who seems as calm as the Torchwood scientists is a woman who Rose think is with UNIT. She's blonde, probably in her late forties, but she's aged very well – she's still quite beautiful. Her hair is short and styled; small pearls dangle from her ears; and she wears a blue blazer over a tan shirt and crisp black pants, with a black scarf with tiny white polka dots which are somehow elegant and fashionable looped loosely around her neck. She's paying close attention to the proceedings of the meeting, and occasionally speaks up – whenever she does, she always has something quite intelligent and reasonable to say – but mostly she remains silent.

After a few moments, Rose moves and sits next to her. "Hello," she says softly. "Rose Tyler."

"Doctor Kate Stewart," the woman greets. "I think I've heard of you."

"I think I've heard of you," Rose shoots back, but she has to take a moment to remember where she's heard the name before. When it comes to her, her eyes widen a bit. "Oh! The dimension cannon, back when we were just starting out, Artie – er, Doctor Yale – didn't she call to get your opinion?

Kate nods. "That's right. Quite an interesting project you've got going on – theoretically impossible, of course, but interesting."

"Oh, you never know." Rose shrugs. "Where I come from, we like impossible."

Kate offers a light laugh. "So I've heard. Is it true? You're from a parallel world?"

"Afraid so."

"And…" She leans in, as though telling or expecting to hear a secret. "You've really travelled in time?"

"And space," Rose puts in. "Yeah. I used to, a bit."

"Good God." Kate sits up straight again. "I've heard rumors, of course, but I wasn't sure if I believed…" She smiles. "That's extraordinary."

"Yeah," Rose agrees. "That's what I'm trying to get back to."

"Well," Kate says, "for what it's worth, you have my complete support."

"Seeing as you're here, and seeing as Seth called you for help at the start, it's probably worth a good bit," Rose replies. "Any ideas on the dimension cannon? Passing thoughts?"

"Well, I don't know how much help I'll be," Kate responds, "but I'll try. What's the latest?"

So Rose explains in as much detail as she can the problems they're facing. She tells Kate about how the elasticity of the walls prevents her from staying in an alternate universe, about how she's only pushing on the walls and they don't know how to get her to punch through them. She tells her about their inability to locate her reality and discern it from others. She remembers what she's been told by Seth, Artie, Tosh, and Amelia and repeats it for Kate, who sits there, nodding as she listens.

"You're a clever girl, Rose," she says once Rose has finished.

Rose scoffs. "Me? Nah. I'm just repeating what I've heard the real brains behind this project saying."

"Still," Kate insists. "You listened, and you understood. Give yourself a little more credit."

Rose looked down at her feet, tapping her trainer-clad toes softly against the floor. The way Kate compliments her, so insistent that Rose thinks too little of herself, reminds her so much of the Doctor. He always did give her more credit than she deserved, all the while maintaining that it was she who was at fault, she who did not respect herself enough. Stupid, blind man, he didn't seem to realize that it was only natural that she would feel small beside him. Nine hundred years old, an absolute genius, so brilliant and wonderful and oh so important… how was she supposed to compare herself to that without feeling a little inconsequential? "I'm just a shop girl," she murmurs.

Kate offers a laugh, but keeps it soft so as not to disrupt the meeting. "Rose Tyler," she says. "You work for Torchwood. You save the planet on a daily basis. You and your team are constantly stepping closer to achieving the impossible. And you've travelled in time. I think you're a little more than just a shop girl."

Rose's audible exhalation could be taken as a shadow of a laugh. "He'd like you," she says with a smile.

"Who would?"

"My Doctor," she replies. "The man who took me travelling. The one I'm trying so hard to get back to." She sucks in a breath and nods. "He would like you."

-0-0-0-

**I've been looking for a chance to bring Kate into this story since Seth mentioned her in Chapter 10. I really loved her character for the one episode she showed up in… fingers crossed that she comes back as a reoccurring character, yeah?**

**On an unrelated topic, I'm not entirely sure where Tosh went in this chapter. She doesn't seem to be hanging out at Torchwood One or Torchwood Three. I tried to slip in a mention of her several times, but it never fit right. It disrupted the flow. Eh. She's off somewhere, doing something. Maybe she's SCUBA diving in Spain. I don't know. You guys can decide for yourselves where Toshiko Sato was in Chapter 15, because I don't even know.**

**Happy New Year, everybody! Yay! Soda and cake and confetti and kazoos all around!**


	16. Chapter 16

_Doctor,_

_I'm not sure how I would define the word 'normal' at this point. I don't know if 'normal' means a dreadfully boring life on the slow path, like most people have, or a wonderful, exhilarating life on the fast track with you. Or something in between. Maybe at this point, for me, 'normal' is just the life I'm living in this parallel world – get up in the morning, try to get home, fight an alien incursion, eat chips, and go to bed._

_But I know that whatever normal is, it isn't my life at the moment._

_The stars are going out, one by one, and you'd probably have a dozen explanations as to why but we humans haven't got a single one. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be hurting anyone, the stars going out – the nights are just a little darker and some astronomers are freaked. So I think we're safe for now. Until the sun goes out._

_The downside of it all seems to be that we aren't the only planet that's noticed. And the astronomers aren't the only ones who are freaked – most of the rest of the universe is as well. And it seems that when alien races are freaked, they decide it's high time they come and try to take over Earth._

_The result is a life that is anything but normal for every single Torchwood and UNIT operative on the planet._

_It's insanely hectic, Doctor – the moment we fight off one alien army, there are three more waiting to take its place. Really, what is it about Earth that makes everyone want to conquer us? We're not that extraordinary. And yet every single panicked race in the universe seems to be on our doorstep with loaded guns. I barely have time to breathe, let alone work on getting the dimension cannon working. I'm almost never at Torchwood One, because my deal with Suzie is that I have to be at Torchwood Three if there's something alien we have to deal with there, and there always is. _

_Thankfully, there's Amelia._

_She's no soldier – I don't think she's ever held a gun in her life. She's not even really a scientist – she hasn't got a degree in anything. But she is a genius, and I know that while the rest of Torchwood is running around frantically trying to save the world, she's holed up in the lab working on the dimension cannon. Seth and Artie join her when they can, but most of the time, they're needed elsewhere. Tosh has officially been pulled back to Torchwood Three – Suzie says that she wasn't anticipating this when she allowed Tosh to stay at Torchwood One for the time being. I understand why we need Tosh at Torchwood Three, but I still can't help but be a bit… I don't know. I can't really think of the word for it. Resentful? I'm not sure. _

_Anyways, while I'm helping to save the world by day, Amelia is working on the dimension cannon in the lab. While I'm helping to save the world again by night, Amelia is tinkering away in her basement with an extra-large coffee and dark circles under her eyes. I swear, that woman does not sleep. That's not to say that she doesn't need to sleep – she does. She just doesn't sleep. She sleeps even less than me, which is really saying something. Especially now. To be honest, though, with aliens attacking 24/7, who has time to sleep anymore?_

_Odd question. Do you sleep? I know you have a room – I found you there after Reinette, remember? I'd never been able to find you when you vanished off to your room before, but I could that day. I think the TARDIS helped out a bit. I think she knew you needed me. _

_Shame she can't help out now._

_The point is, I know you've got a room, but in all the time I knew you, I don't think I ever once saw you asleep. That healing coma thing after you regenerated doesn't count. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep at night, I'd hear you up and about. I remember a few nights when I couldn't sleep, so I got up and found you in the central room, and we just sat there until I fell asleep with my head resting against your shoulder. But I don't think I ever saw you fall asleep. _

_I don't know. Maybe Time Lords don't need to sleep. Maybe you only need to sleep a little bit, very occasionally. Maybe you just need those healing coma things. I don't know. I'll ask you when I find you._

_Anyways. Back to Amelia. You'd definitely like her, Doctor – she feels like someone you'd take with you. She reminds me a lot of you at times, in a bunch of different ways. She pops her 'p's on words like 'yup' and 'nope', for one. She rambles in techno-speak sometimes. And occasionally she just does something really weird and doesn't explain herself at all. Take two days ago, for example. I'd taken a few hits the day before in hand-to-hand combat with an alien (note to self: use ranged weaponry whenever possible). No broken bones or lasting injuries, but I was a little battered and bruised. Don't worry, I'm fine, I'm fine – you don't have to hunt down the alien and go all Oncoming Storm on him. I'm fine, I swear. But anyway, Torchwood gave me two days off to recover – they would've given me more, but we don't have agents to spare. Anyway, I'm home watching telly, and all of a sudden my doorbell rings. So I get up and go to the door, and I open it, and there's Amelia. I say hello, but she doesn't reply – she just grabs my arm, takes out a syringe, and draws a bit of my blood. I was surprised, yeah, and it hurt a bit, so I might've yelled something like "What was that for?" And she just says, all smiles and enthusiasm, "Thank you!" and then she turns and leaves. No explanation, no apology. I was a bit annoyed with her at the time, but looking back on it, it actually seems kind of funny._

_So, yeah. Amelia's a bit strange. You'd definitely like her._

_Seth's been spending a lot of time here lately, whenever we can get away from Torchwood and aliens and all that. He's a great guy, a good friend. We'll have a drink, discuss the dimension cannon in techno-speak that I understand approximately 2% of (thankfully, he always comes to the realization that I have no idea what he's talking about and rephrase it in terms that I can understand). Sometimes Amelia comes over as well, and Artie came too just the once, but not often. Amelia likes to spend every free second (she does not count dates with her boyfriend, Rory, as 'free seconds') in her basement working on whatever project has struck her fancy, and Artie just prefers to relax at home with her girlfriend, Leah. So most of the time, it's just me and Seth. It's good, great for relieving the stress of the day._

_Now, before you get all protective, like you used to when outer space boys looked at me in what you deemed to be 'the wrong way' – there's nothing going on there. We're friends. Good friends. Really, he's the closest thing I've got to a best friend here. But I don't… feel like that about him. Believe me, Doctor. I don't feel that way about anyone else anymore._

_It's just you._

_It's always going to be you._

_All of my love,_

_Rose_

-0-0-0-

"Power levels holding steady," Amelia announces without looking up from the computer screen; she chuckles, adding, "I sound like I'm reading off dialogue from a bad science fiction television movie. Anyway." She looks up, grinning at Rose. "You ready?"

Rose stands in the center of the room, shifting awkwardly – she's uncomfortable surrounded by all of this machinery and equipment that looks like it ought to be a weapon, not at all something that would send her home. Seth, Artie, Amelia, and Tosh decided to take a different approach when building this model of the dimension cannon. Instead of creating a small handheld device, they're testing out the idea of a much larger device that would stay in this universe while sending the user to the parallel. It's undoubtedly much more powerful than the cannons they've built previously, but there's no guarantee that it'll work – going back to an analogy they've used before, it's possible that they're just banging against the walls with a dull club when what they need is a fine scalpel. In other words, it might be more power that they need, in which case, this prototype ought to do the trick. But it also might be that they're going about this all the wrong way, and instead of just going at the walls with everything they've got, they need to be precise and methodical – a small incision will do everything they need it to.

The trouble is, they have no idea which one is true.

So they're giving everything a try and seeing what works. It's called experimenting.

So here she is, standing in the middle of the lab, amidst wires and cords and big blocks of machinery, all interconnected into something that looks like it would be better suited to destroying alien invaders than bringing Rose home.

She's calling it a dimension blaster. Created to violently blast a hole in the walls between dimensions. If she's lucky.

"Yeah," she lies, nodding to Amelia. "Seth?"

"Hold on," Seth calls from his computer. "Final checks. Just to make sure it's safe." He types away at his keyboard, murmuring to himself, "Analyzing core data transfer stream, checking for fluctuations…" He trails off, hits one last key, and looks up. "You're good to go."

"Thanks," Rose says with a nod. "Pond, power her up."

"Yes, ma'am," Amelia agrees with a grin, typing the command into her computer. "You ready?"

"I already said I was ready."

"Yeah, I know, I just…" She shrugs. "Alright. Three, two, one… go."

On the word 'go', she brings her pointer finger down on the Enter key, and the program for the dimension blaster runs; the pieces of equipment all activate simultaneously, electricity crackling through the thick wires that connect them. Rose closes her eyes, hands at her sides, back straight, waiting…

But the next thing she hears is the hum of the dimension blaster as it powers down.

She opens her eyes, looking around – all of the lights in the lab have switched off. A few seconds later, lights around the room that Rose recognizes as the ones powered by the building's backup generator flicker on, but the dimension blaster remains inactive.

"What's going on?" Amelia asks, turning to Seth as though she thinks he knows the answer, but he only shrugs and says, "Beats me."

"Something wrong with the lights in the building?" Amelia muses. "The power grid, maybe… if I could get online…" She smacks the keyboard of her computer lightly, irritated. "Hang on, wait." She plunges her hand into the pocket of her jacket and produces a mobile phone; she turns it on, tapping the screen a few times as she attempts to open an internet app. "Hang on," she says, shaking it. "No signal. There's always signal here."

Rose moves towards the window, swinging her arms idly at her sides. Her gait and her expression are casual, relaxed, but when she reaches the window and looks out, she freezes. "Amelia."

"Huh?" The Scottish redhead looks up. "Yeah?"

"It's not just the building."

"What do you mean?" She hurries away from the computer, leaving her phone on the lab table, and joins Rose at the window. "Oh," she murmurs as they look out over the darkened city. And Rose states the obvious, simply and clearly, the thought running through both women's minds.

"It's London."

-0-0-0-

They're in the dark for three days.

No power at all, except in a select few places, the very few places which have strong backup generators. Canary Wharf. Hospitals. Those sorts of places.

There is no power in houses and lofts. There is no power in schools and offices. There is no power in banks and churches, in shops and restaurants, in hotels and train station, in clubs and bars.

There is no power in London.

And nobody can figure out why.

There's nothing wrong with the power grid. Absolutely nothing. Everything should be functioning in exactly the way it's supposed to. It's just… not. It makes no sense. Not even Torchwood and UNIT can understand it, though both organizations reckon that something extraterrestrial is going on. It's been about five days since the last invasion, anyway – they're overdue for another one.

Amelia's managed to rig up some sort of a tiny generator in her basement, so she has power there. She's still hard at work on the next prototype – she still thinks that the dimension blaster has potential, but until the power comes back on, they can't test it. So it's back to the drawing board and back to the handhelds. Rose can't say she's unhappy about that bit. She never did like the dimension blaster.

When the power finally does come back on, everyone's called into Torchwood One. Every single Torchwood operative, regardless of which branch they work at. They're all called to Canary Wharf.

Rose doesn't know why. She doesn't know what's going on. And she doesn't get a chance to ask.

Because as she's stepping out of the lift onto the floor that their lab is on, the whole world shakes, and then all is fire.

_We're under attack. _That's the one thought that dominates her mind as she stumbles away from the lift to the sound of distant explosions and people screaming. She has to get to the armory, get herself a weapon… figure out exactly what's going on… find Mickey and the rest of her team…

"Rose!" She spins around at the sound of her voice and sees a tall, skinny figure running towards her, waves of red hair swinging. Amelia skids to a stop in front of Rose, eyes wide and wild, hair windblown, breathing heavily. "I've got it," she gasps. "I've figured it out."

"Figured what out?"

In response, Amelia reaches back into her pocket and pulls out a small, round thing with a yellow button. A new prototype, it seems. _I've figured it out. _Those were her exact words. She's figured it out.

At the prospect, Rose's heart begins to beat faster.

"It was you," Amelia explains between gasped breaths. "You were the key, all this time, sitting right under my nose – I felt so _thick _when I figured it out!"

"Slow down," Rose urges. "What did you figure out?"

"Your DNA," Amelia replies. "You're not from around here, your genetic makeup is different – only slightly, only very, very slightly, but it is. You've got – _echoes, _echoes of your world in you because that's where you come from. I figured every parallel's got to be a little bit different, and things from a parallel world would – would be just a little out of phase with the rest of the world. It's like, we're all ringing at one frequency, and you and everyone from your world is ringing at a different one. Do you understand?"

"No," Rose replies honestly.

"Not important, you haven't got to. But look." She holds up the new prototype. "Your DNA, that's how I did it. I figured that if I could isolate what made you just a little bit different, I could lock onto other objects that ring at the same frequency as you. Other things from your world."

"My DNA," Rose muses. "That's why you –"

"Took your blood, yeah," Amelia confirms. "I thought maybe I could use it to hone in on the right parallel, and I think I was right."

Rose sucks in a startled breath, barely daring to hope. "You think –"

"It'll take you home, yeah," Amelia finishes. "If I'm right. And if we're very lucky."

Rose shakes her head slowly, grinning. "I'm feeling lucky. That sort of a day."

"Today?" Amelia frowns, glancing around at the panicked state of their surroundings. "Really?" She shakes it off, holding out the dimension cannon prototype. "Whatever, doesn't matter. Here, take it and go."

"What?" Rose shakes her head. "No, I can't – have you seen what's going on around here?"

"Yeah," Amelia says, and as if on cue, both women stumble as an explosion rocks the building. "That's the point, Rose, this could be it. You've got to go." She grabs Rose's hand and presses the dimension cannon into it, curling the blonde woman's fingers around the device. "Go."

"But –" Rose hesitates. "What about Mickey, and my mum –"

"They'll be fine," Amelia assures her. "I made two more of these. I'll send them over once all this is dealt with. And if I don't make it out of this…" She swallows. "They're all packaged up at my flat. With a note. If I don't make it out of this, Rory will find them and send them to your mum and Mickey. Please, Rose – just go."

Again, Rose hesitates. She doesn't want to leave her mum and Mickey, doesn't want to leave her team in this state. But they can carry on without her. And she… she can't say no to the possibility of going home. This is the best chance she's ever had, and she'll be damned if she's going to let it pass her by.

This is her chance, and she's taking it.

"Thank you," she whispers to Amelia, and squeezes the dimension cannon. She feels the yellow button slide a shallow distance down into the device under her fingertips.

And then the world dissolves into blue electricity.

-0-0-0-

**OH GOD I MISSED MY UPDATE DAY. I AM SO SORRY. I DIDN'T MEAN TO. SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY.**


	17. Chapter 17

At first, Rose sees nothing extraordinary.

Amelia was convinced that this prototype would take her home, right back to where she needs to be, but Rose knows there's probably no way to know for sure.

And then she feels the prototype in her hand vibrating.

She uncurls her fingers, turning it over and looking at it – there's a tiny screen on the back, displaying little words and numbers. It displays a date, a time, her location, and… _oh._

She should really have more faith in Amelia. That brilliant Scottish girl thinks of everything.

The words on the dimension cannon read, _RESONANCE MATCH CONFIRMED, _and then, _CONGRATS, ROSE! YOU MADE IT! _With three exclamation marks.

Oh, Amelia. Clever, brilliant, mad Amelia.

She frowns down at the dimension cannon as a thought crosses her mind – that time and date, those aren't correct. But Amelia's dimension cannon wouldn't lie. "Hey, what's that about?" she asks, tapping the dimension cannon. "Are you taking me time travelling now as well?" She feels a bit silly talking to a tiny machine, but still. It's a good question.

And that's when the pain kicks in.

She crumples to the ground, contorting in agony – yeah, dimension travel and time travel without a capsule do not make for a pleasant combination. Every muscle in her body is on fire, every bone feels like it's splintering, everything aches…

And then it fades.

And then it's gone. Much faster than any time that she's jumped dimensions before. Huh. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that this is her home universe, where she's supposed to be. Maybe she fits in here, so coming through isn't as much of an ordeal.

Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. She's here. She's really here, she really did it, she –

She's _home._

She is really and truly home. Home, home, home, home, home!

As she stands up, a grin begins to grow on her face, and without thinking about it, she lets out a triumphant, glorious shout of, "Ha!" Just the same way he used to. The same way he still does. The same way he will again, with her at his side. Because she's home, she's really home, and she's coming back to him.

She hadn't realized it, but over the course of all that time spent in the parallel world… she's forgotten what it feels like to be happy.

And then a thought crosses her mind, and her face falls. A stupid thought, a logical thought, a thought she hadn't even considered because she'd been so busy concentrating on getting here. She never even bothered to stop and think, _what now?_

She's home, yes.

But now how does she find him?

This question is answered almost the exact second that it comes into her mind, when she looks up to the sky and sees a silvery star-like web flying over the city. As she watches, it begins to shoot lightening down at the Earth below.

Okay, yeah. That would be aliens.

And where there's aliens, there's the Doctor.

So she takes off running after the flying web.

She ends up near the Thames – the area is ringed by people struggling to see, pressing against a police barrier. There's an army jeep, some people wearing UNIT's trademark floppy red hats… there's an ambulance… _oh, God, _there's a body on a stretcher being loaded into the ambulance…

And there's a woman with red hair turning away from the whole scene.

Rose slows to a stop beside the woman, looking around frantically. "What happened?" she demands. "What did they find? I'm sorry, did they find someone?"

"I don't know," the redheaded woman replies with a shrug. "A bloke called the Doctor, or something."

Rose's heartbeat speeds up – _yes, oh, God, yes, he's here, she's so close, she's going to see him again. _"Well, where is he?"

"They took him away," the woman says. "He's dead."

No.

_No._

He can't be. Can he even die? Wouldn't he just regenerate? No, no, no, no, no, he can't be dead, he just can't be. She's come all this way, he can't just be dead – oh, God, if he's dead, if she's come all this way just to find his broken body, she's going to _kill _him…

She turns away, her expression broken, shocked, empty, downcast. If he's dead, if he really is… if she's lost him… what's the point? What's the point of any of it? The only thing she lived for in the parallel world was the possibility of coming home to him, but now she's come home and he's gone… what's she got left?

"I'm sorry," the woman tells her. "Did you know him? I mean, they didn't say his name. Could be any doctor."

Oh, the poor, ignorant woman. She has no idea. It's not any doctor, it's _the _Doctor, Rose's Doctor, the only Doctor even worth considering… "I came so far," she murmurs

"It – it could be anyone," the woman reasons again, and Rose turns back to look at her, asking, "What's your name?"

"Donna," the woman replies. "And you?"

Rose opens her mouth to give her name, but stops. What if this is wrong? What if this isn't her home universe at all? It seems unlikely, but… yes. That's got to be it. She's going to cling to that tiny possibility, because if he's dead… no. He can't be. He's not. She's not even going to let herself think that. "Oh," she replies, "I was just – passing by. I shouldn't even be here, this is… wrong. It's wrong. This is so wrong." And then she stops.

Because there's something on this woman's back.

She can't see it, but she knows it's there. It's like her mind doesn't want to notice it. _Perception filter, _she thinks. Got to be. Could this woman be the reason for this, this wrongness? Could it be the thing on her back that Rose's mind refuses to see? "Sorry, what was it?" she asks. "Donna what?"

"Why do you keep looking at my back?" Donna demands.

"I'm not," Rose says, but she can't keep her eyes from drifting towards the redhead's back.

"Yes, you are," Donna insists. "You keep looking behind me. You're doing it now!" She cranes her neck to the side, straining to see her own back. "What is it, what's there? Did someone put something on my back?"

But before Rose can come up with a reply, she feels a tingling sensation growing all across her skin – _no, not now, she can't get pulled back now. _But as usual, she can't do anything to stop it.

Blue lightning flashes bright, and she's gone.

-0-0-0-

The pain is immediate when she comes through, but it's briefer, lessened. Maybe it's getting easier to travel because the walls are getting weaker. Maybe she's just getting used to it. She doesn't know. At any rate, she's able to remain standing and silent, gritting her teeth through the pain, and the moment it fades, she's smashing the heel of her hand repeatedly into the yellow button of the dimension cannon.

"No, no, no, take me back!" She's aware that she's attracting a few confused looks – she seems to have travelled back to her universe, but she hasn't gone back to Canary Wharf. She's just standing on a street corner somewhere in the middle of London. It's night, or at least evening. And it's funny, but it doesn't seem to be the same day that she left, because there are no aliens attacking Torchwood Tower, no evidence of a recent invasion. Huh. Time travel. Unintended side effect of Amelia's dimension cannons.

"Come on, take me back!" she shouts desperately as she slams her hand against the button again and again, but nothing happens. Could it be broken, burned out, nonfunctional? No, no, no, she can't have broken it. She's finally found a way home, she can't just break it. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair at all. The universe can't be that cruel.

"Take me back!" she yells again, and she can't help but remember the last time she said those exact words. Two – blimey, has it really been two years? It's hard to believe. Two years alone, two years isolated, two years without him. Two long, lonely years she's spent away from home, away from him.

Well, no more.

"Come on," she urges, quieter now. "Take me home. Please, come on, please. Take me home."

But no matter how many times that she hits the button, nothing happens.

She walks to a little diner and sits down, orders herself some chips and pays with the paper money she has stuffed in her pocket. She sets the dimension cannon down on the table beside her, and every few minutes, she hits the button again, and she hopes.

But still, nothing.

Until finally, about a half an hour after she got pulled back through, she pushes the button, and the world disappears in a flash of blue electricity.

She comes out some time after the last time – years, actually. Yes, definitely time travel. And she comes out in a UNIT base.

Not by accident, it seems.

The UNIT team working there has noticed her coming and going into this reality (apparently, she's going to pop in a few more times in the linear past, things that are still in her future), and they've figured out most of what's going on. A woman there named Captain Erisa Magambo explains everything to her, and the readings that Rose is getting on the dimension cannon – brilliant Amelia, she designed it to be able to measure timelines – match up to what the good Captain is saying.

And it all centers around a woman named Donna Noble.

The very same Donna who Rose met at the scene of the Doctor's death.

The dimension cannon doesn't pull her back quickly – she manages to stay in her home universe for a full three hours, during which time she becomes increasingly familiar with the inner workings of the dimension cannon. Amelia, genius that she is, has incorporated a thousand different functions, all very user-friendly. She finds that yes, she is in a parallel world separate from her own, but it's strangely interconnected. It's as though this world is branching off of that one, almost taking it over. And yes, Amelia's dimension cannon did exactly what it was supposed to – it located something with the same dimensional resonance as Rose and locked onto it. Only the thing it located was Donna Noble, and Donna is currently trapped in this reality.

In fact, Donna seems to be the epicenter of this reality. It's all orbiting around her. And she doesn't even know she's living the wrong life. But as long as she's here, the dimension cannon will bring Rose here.

Therefore, there is only one way for Rose to get home.

She has to get Donna out of here.

When the dimension cannon finally does take her back, she finds herself on an unfamiliar street, and sits down on a bench to wait. She figures that since it took half an hour for the dimension cannon to charge up again last time, the same will apply to this time. And she's right. After the half hour has passed, she hits the button, and the blue electricity carries her back to Donna's world.

The pain is less and less every time she jumps. She's almost certain now that she's wearing a hole in the wall, so every time she passes through it, it takes more effort, and she can stay put longer. Almost certain. Maybe she'll go and find Amelia next time she comes back to this reality. Maybe. Or maybe she'll be too busy jumping back home.

She comes out on a street this time, and for a moment, she's confused. Donna's the thing that the cannon is attracted to – every time she jumps, she should come out close to Donna. But the fiery redhead is nowhere to be seen.

And then she hears the scream.

She takes off immediately, running in that direction, and sees a backup of cars behind a truck… and lying on the street in front of the truck…

Oh.

She's immediately certain that this is somehow the solution, that this is the means by which Donna Noble is changing the world back to the way it ought to be. This is the way that they're both going to get home.

But still, it comes as a shock to see the redheaded woman lying still on the pavement.

Rose steps towards her, pushing past the distraught truck driver and bending over Donna. Because she's just had a thought – a way to let the Doctor know that the universe is in danger. And, perhaps more importantly, a way to let him know she's on her way.

"Tell him this," she instructs softly as she leans over Donna. "Two words."

And then she bends down and whispers into the woman's ear the two words which will simultaneously warn the Doctor to the oncoming danger and tell him that she's coming to find him.

"Bad Wolf."

And then she turns and walks away and waits for the cannon to take her back.

-0-0-0-

The next time she jumps home, she ends up with Captain Magambo again, and the time period is as close to what she thinks of as 'the present day' as she's gotten so far. She has no idea how to manipulate the time and space coordinates on the dimension cannon – they seem to jumble and randomize themselves every time she jumps. Thankfully, she's stayed in a restricted time and area thus far – London, during the two years during which she was trapped. She hasn't ended up in the Middle Ages or something. Yet. She really does need to talk to Amelia about all of this.

Captain Magambo explains to her everything they've learned about this parallel world which should not exist, everything they know about Donna Noble. She explains about the disasters which occurred because the Doctor was not there to stop them. The Adipose. The Titanic crashing into London, flooding the whole area with radiation (Donna and her family only survived because Donna had a raffle ticket which won her a luxury weekend break). And now, most recently, the ATMOS systems going haywire. All the things that could have been prevented – that _were _prevented by the Doctor. All the things that must be prevented again.

And it's Rose's job to set things right.

She gets pulled back again, of course. And the next time she comes through, she's standing atop a hill, and in front of her, Donna Noble sits with her grandfather and his precious telescope.

"You know," her grandfather – Wilfred, that was his name – says, "we'd get a bit of cash if we sold this thing."

"Don't you dare," Donna replies firmly. She sighs, and says, "I always imagined, your old age… I'd have put a bit of money by. Make you comfy. Never did. I'm just useless."

Useless. Ha! If only she knew.

"You're supposed to say 'no, you're not'," Donna says as Wilfred peers into the telescope; he doesn't appear to hear her as he muses, "Ah, it must be the alignment."

"What's wrong?"

"Well, I don't know," he says. "I mean, it can't be the lens. I was looking at Orion, the constellation of Orion. You take a look. And tell me, what can you see?"

"Where?"

"Well, up there in the sky!"

Donna looks into the telescope, and then back up at the sky with her naked eye. "Well, I can't see anything, it's just… black."

"Well, I mean, it's working!" Wilfred exclaims. "The telescope is working."

"Well… maybe it's clouds."

"There is no clouds!"

"Well, there must be!"

"There is not!" he argues. "It was there. An entire constellation." He points up at the sky, and Rose follows his gaze up to the sky to see that yes, he's completely right.

Oh. _Oh. _It's not just her universe. It's this one, too. It's probably every single one.

The stars are going out.

"Look," Wilfred says. "Look there… they're going out. Oh, my God! Donna! The stars are going out."

Donna, to her credit, doesn't seem surprised. She just turns and looks over her shoulder, and sees Rose standing there. And she says, "I'm ready."

She's probably referring to a conversation they haven't had yet, but Rose can guess what she means. Captain Magambo has explained enough for Rose to know what Donna means.

She's ready to go to UNIT, to time travel back to that day when she turned right instead of left. She's ready to do what she's got to in order to change time back to what it's meant to be.

She's ready to die.


	18. Chapter 18

"Loadstone testing now at 15.4," a voice on the loudspeaker announces as Donna and Rose enter a huge warehouse-like building, the base where Rose has been working with Captain Magambo. A circle of mirrors is set up in the middle, with wires and cords leading into that blue police box Rose knows so well. "Repeat, 15.4."

They approach Captain Magambo, who stands before a large computer; she salutes to Rose, saying, "Ma'am."

"I've told you," Rose sighs, "don't salute."

"Well, if you're not going to tell us your name…"

"What," Donna says, "you don't know either?"

"Crossed too many different realities," Rose explains as she checks the computer. "Trust me, the wrong word in the wrong place can change an entire casual nexus." Huh. Listen to her, talking all clever. All that time spent with the Doctor, Amelia, and Seth – they've rubbed off on her.

"She talks like that a lot," Captain Magambo says to Donna. "And you must be Miss Noble."

"Donna," Donna says.

"Captain Erisa Magambo. Thank you for this."

"I don't even know what I'm doing."

"Is it awake?" Rose asks the Captain.

"Seems to be quiet today," Magambo replies. "Ticking over. Like it's waiting."

She. Like she's waiting. Rose resists the urge to correct the UNIT Captain – these people are always referring to the TARDIS as 'it'. She humors them, for the same reason that she doesn't tell them her name. But she doesn't like it.

"D'you want to see it?" Rose asks Donna, but she's looking at the TARDIS.

"What's a police box?" Donna questions.

_It's a TARDIS. That's Time and Relative Dimension in Space. It's a spaceship. It's a time machine. It's a doorway to the universe. It's home._

That's what she wants to say. But of course, she doesn't say any of it.

"They salvaged it from underneath the Thames," she says. "Just go inside."

"What for?"

"Just go in."

She watches, smiling knowingly, as Donna hesitantly enters the TARDIS. For a few seconds, there's silence, and then the redheaded woman's disbelieving voice comes from inside, shouting, "No. Way!"

Mouth hanging open, she gets out and walking around the outside of the box, and the hurries back in to see that it's really as huge on the inside as she'd thought. Then she steps out again and walks back to Rose, looking shocked.

"What d'you think?" Rose asks, grinning.

"Can I have a coffee?"

They get Donna her coffee, and together, the two women step inside the box.

Every time she walks inside, it's the very definition of bittersweet. It's beautiful, so wonderful and incredible and beautiful to see the place she calls home again. But it's so painful, so miserable, so achingly awful to see it devoid of light, of warmth, and of the Doctor.

"Time and Relative Dimension in Space," Rose tells Donna. "This room used to shine with light. I think it's dying." She touches the console lightly, and the Time Rotor moves just a bit. "Still trying to help."

"And…" Donna pauses. "And it belonged to the Doctor?"

"He was a Time Lord," Rose explains. "Last of his kind."

"But if he was so special, what was he doing with me?"

Rose shrugs and offers a small smile. "He thought you were brilliant."

"Don't be stupid."

"But you are!" she insists. "It just took the Doctor to show you that, simply by being with him." She looks away, remembering who she was before she met the Doctor – the young, dull shop girl, the dropout living with her mother, the one who nothing interesting ever happened to. "He did the same to me," she says quietly. "To everyone he touches."

"Were you and him…?"

_Yes. No. I loved him. I think he loved me. Maybe someday._

"Do you want to see it?" Rose asks, touching Donna's shoulder gently.

"No," Donna replies immediately, but as Rose continues to look at her back, she relents. "Go on, then."

-0-0-0-

"We don't know how the TARDIS works," Rose says to Donna as they stand in the center of the circle of mirrors. "But we've managed to scrape off the surface technology. Enough to show you the creature."

"It's a creature?"

"Just stand here."

"Out of the circle, please," Captain Magambo calls.

"Yes, ma'am," Rose replies, and walks out of the circle.

"Can't you stay with me?" Donna calls after her, but before Rose has a chance to respond, Magambo calls out, "Ready? And… activate."

The lights around the circle switch on, flooding the area with bright light; frightened, Donna shuts her eyes.

"Open your eyes, Donna," Rose calls.

"Is it there?" the redhead asks shakily.

Rose's eyes drift to Donna's back, where, yes, she can see the large black beetle-like creature. It seems like it's clinging to her shirt, and Rose has to wonder how it stays on when Donna gets changed, but she supposes normal rules don't apply to it. After all, without the lights, the mirrors, and the TARDIS technology, you can't see or interact with it at all. "Yeah," she says. "Open your eyes, look at it."

"I can't."

"It's part of you, Donna. Look."

Slowly, Donna opens her eyes and looks at her back in the mirrors. When her gaze lands on the massive beetle, she starts to spin around in panic, trying to get a better view.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," Rose says quickly. "Calm down. Donna?" No response from the redhead. "Donna? Donna!"

Eventually, Donna stops spinning, but her eyes are still wide. "Okay," Rose breathes.

"What is it?" Donna demands through labored breaths as she fights to remain calm.

"We don't know," Rose replies honestly.

"Oh," Donna spits sarcastically. "Thanks."

"It feeds of time," Rose explains, remembering what she's been told by Captain Magambo. "By – by changing time, by making someone's life take a different turn. Like, meetings never made… children never born… a life never loved. But with you, it's…"

"But I never did anything important," Donna insists.

"Yeah, you did," Rose says. "One day, that thing made you turn right instead of left."

"When was that?"

"Oh, you wouldn't remember," Rose tells her offhandedly. "It was the most ordinary day in the world, but by turning right, you never met the Doctor, and the whole world just changed around you."

"Can you get rid of – of it?"

"No," Rose says. "I can't even touch it. It seems to be in a state of flux." Listen to her, sounding clever again. Only this time she hasn't got a clue what she's talking about.

"What does that mean?" Donna demands, sounding fed up already due to the tiny bit of technobabble that Rose has subjected her to. How did she ever survive the Doctor, with his rambling and his genius-speak and his mile-a-minute rants?

"I don't know," Rose says with a laugh. "It's the sort of thing the Doctor would say!"

"You liar!" Donna accuses. "You told me I was special! But it's not me, it's this thing! I'm just a host!"

"No, there's more than that," Rose insists. "The readings are strange, it's… it's like reality's just bending round you."

"Because of this thing!"

"No, no! We're getting separate readings from you. And they've always been there, since the day you were born."

"This is not relevant to the mission," Captain Magambo interrupts. Typical UNIT, need-to-know and all that. Well, not for Rose.

"I thought it was just the Doctor we needed, but it's the both of you," Rose says strongly. "The Doctor and Donna Noble. Together. To stop the stars from going out."

"Why?" Donna demands. "What can I do?" There's a pause, and then, in a much softer, weaker voice, she requests, "Turn it off. Please."

"Captain," Rose says, and Captain Magambo announces, "Power down," and hits a button on the computer, and the lights go off. Rose steps into the circle and walks to Donna, touching her arm comfortingly.

"It's… it's still there, though," Donna stammers. "What can I do… to get rid of it?"

A small smile grows on Rose's face as she replies, "You're gonna travel in time.

-0-0-0-

"The TARDIS has tracked down the moment of intervention," Rose says, and she can't help but marvel at how very like the Doctor she sounds. "Monday the twenty-fifth, one minute past ten in the morning. Your car was on Little Sutton Street leading to Ealing Road, but you turned right heading towards Griffin's Parade. You need to turn left. That's the most important thing. You've got to go back, turn left. Have you got that, Donna? One minute past ten, make yourself turn left, heading for the Chiswick Highroad."

"Keep the jacket on at all times," Captain Magambo says, speaking of the coat Donna is wearing – strange-looking, all full of wires and such. "It's insulation against temporal feedback." As an officer puts a kind of a watch on Donna's wrist, Magambo says, "This will correspond to local time wherever you land." And then she hands Donna a glass full of water, saying, "This is to combat dehydration."

After Donna's sipped a bit of the water, the three of them plus several UNIT soldiers walk to the circle of mirrors.

"This is where we leave you," Rose says.

"I don't want to see that thing on my back," Donna warns.

"No," Rose agrees. "The mirrors are just incidental. They bounce chronon energy back into the center, which we control to decide the destination."

"It's a time machine," Donna summarizes incredulously.

Rose smiles, and repeats back, "It's a time machine."

"If you could?" Captain Magambo requests, and Donna walks into the center of the circle. "Powering up."

The lights turn on, and Donna asks, "How d'you know it's gonna work?"

"Hmm?" Rose looks up. "Oh… yeah… we, we don't. We're just… we're just guessing."

"Yeah," Donna replies with a sarcastic little laugh. "Oh, brilliant!"

"Just remember," Rose says, "when you get to the junction, change the car's direction by one minute past ten."

"How do I do that?"

_You run in front of a truck. You get hit. You die. _"It's up to you."

"Well, I just have to… run up to myself, and… have a good argument."

Rose laughs. "I'd like to see that!" _But I won't. Instead, I'll see you die._

"Activate loadstone," Captain Magambo calls.

"Good luck."

"I'm ready!" Donna says brightly.

"One minute past ten."

"'Cause I understand now," she continues, sounding slightly scared but full of hope. "You said I was gonna die, but you mean this whole world, it's gonna blink out of existence. But that's not dying. Because a better world takes its place. The Doctor's world. And I'm still alive! That's right, isn't it? I don't die? If I change things, I don't die?" She looks to Rose for reassurance, and Rose tries to keep the sorrow off her face, but she's never been good at putting on a mask. And she knows that Donna can tell she's wrong. "That's… that's right, isn't it?" she asks again, edging into desperation.

"I'm sorry," Rose says, softly, regretfully.

"But I can't die!" Donna insists. "I've got a future! With the Doctor! You told me!"

"Activate!" Captain Magambo shouts. Sparks fly; a white light engulfs Donna, and when it fades, she's gone.

And Rose is gone, too, not long after.

-0-0-0-

The next time Rose comes through, she's in a small, run-down neighborhood that she recognizes from the photos UNIT showed her as Donna's home in Leeds. And it's not long before Donna herself walks around the corner and sees Rose. "Hello."

"Hi," Rose replies, perfectly casual, but all she can think is, _I watched you die. _

Huh. Seems like she's better at putting on a mask than she thought.

They walk together to a park bench in silence, and Rose subtly checks her dimension cannon for the time and date. She thinks back to the timeline that Captain Magambo showed her, and in her mind, she finds the date.

Ah, yes. This is right in the middle of the ATMOS crisis, then. Right before Gwen and Ianto give their lives, and Jack… oh, Jack…

"It's the ATMOS devices," Rose explains as they sit. "We're lucky, it's not so bad here. Britain hasn't got that much petrol. But all over Europe, China, South Africa, they're getting choked by gas."

"Can anyone stop it?" Donna asks.

"Yeah," Rose replies. _I watched you die._ "They're trying right now, this little band of fighters, on board the Sontaran ship." She looks up at the sky and murmurs, "Any second now…"

And indeed, the moment she finishes speaking, flames burn across the night sky. They illuminate the world below briefly, and then they fade, and all is dark again.

"And that was?" Donna asks, sounding shocked.

"That was the Torchwood team," Rose replies sadly. "Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, they gave their lives. And Captain Jack Harkness was transported to the Sontaran home world." Oh, Jack… poor Jack, her best friend, her brother. Trapped in this eternal purgatory. Because of her. And Gwen and Ianto, dead because the Doctor wasn't here. It hurts all the more, that thought, because she did know Ianto very well. They never really acknowledged it, either of them, but they bonded over that shared pain in their eyes. Neither ever asked the other about the reason for that pain. They communicated in coffees and bear claws, in murmurs of "Thanks" and brief hugs for no reason at all. He was a friend, a comrade, someone who somehow knew what she was going through. And now he's gone.

It isn't the same Ianto, of course. And he'll be back soon, just as soon as Donna sets everything right (which Rose knows she will, having already experienced it). But still. In this universe, in this moment in time, Ianto Jones is dead. "There's no one left," Rose whispers.

"You're always wearing the same clothes," Donna notices. "Why won't you tell me your name?"

"None of this was meant to happen," Rose murmurs. "There was a man. This wonderful man, and he stopped it. The Titanic, the Adipose, the ATMOS, he stopped them all from happening."

"That… Doctor?" She is clever in her own way, Donna Noble is. She's caught on quickly.

"You knew him," Rose tells her.

"Did I?" Donna frowns, puzzled. "When?"

"I think you dream about him sometimes," Rose continues. "A man in a suit. Tall, thin man, great hair…" She allows herself a soft laugh. _I watched you die. _"Some really great hair."

"Who are you?"

"I was like you," Rose replies simply. "I used to be you. You've travelled with him, Donna. You've travelled with the Doctor in a different world."

"I never met him, and he's dead."

"He died underneath the Thames on Christmas Eve," Rose agrees, "but you were meant to be there. He needed someone to stop him, and that was you. You made him leave. You saved his life." _I watched you die._

For a moment, something flickers in Donna's eyes, and Rose thinks that perhaps she remembers. But that flash is gone in a moment, and Donna snaps, "Stop it. I don't know what you're talking about, leave me alone!"

"Something's coming, Donna," Rose says. "Something worse."

"The whole world is stinking," Donna points out viciously. "How can anything be worse than this?"

"Trust me," Rose pleads. "We need the Doctor more than ever. I've been pulled across from a different universe, because every single universe is in danger. It's coming, Donna. It's coming from across the stars and nothing can stop it."

"_What _is?"

"The darkness."

"Well, what do you keep telling me for?" Donna demands in frustration. "What am I supposed to do? I'm nothing special. I mean, I'm… I'm not, I'm nothing special. I'm a temp. I'm not even that, I'm nothing!"

Rose laughs. "Donna Noble, you're the most important woman in the whole of creation."

"Oh, don't," Donna breathes. "Just… don't. I'm tired. I'm so… tired."

"I need you to come with me."

"Yeah," Donna scoffs. "Well, blonde hair might work on the men, but you ain't shifting me, lady."

Rose smiles. _I watched you die. _"That's more like it."

"I've got plenty more," Donna assures her."

"I know you'll come with me," Rose says, softly but confidently. _I watched you die. _"Only when you want to."

"You'll have a long wait, then."

Rose thinks of the times she saw on her dimension cannon, quickly calculating the time between now and when Donna turned to her and said she was ready. "Not really, just three weeks. Tell me, does your grandfather still own that telescope?"

"He never lets go of it," Donna replies softly.

"Three weeks' time," Rose repeats. _I watched you die. _"But you've got to be certain." She remembers what Donna said to her – _'You said I was gonna die.' _"'Cause, when you come with me, Donna… sorry… so sorry, but… you're gonna die."

_I sent you to your death. I watched you die._

And then the dimension cannon has one of its moment where it opts for a route apart from that of blue lightning and pain, and grants her a smooth transition back to the other universe.

And she fades away in front of Donna Noble's eyes.

-0-0-0-

**Sorry if this is a bit confusing - I decided to jumble up the order of events in Turn Left so that all of the foreknowledge Rose always seems to have would make sense. I put a lot of thought into the order, so I hope it makes sense.**


End file.
